Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation

"Entertaining and Quite Interesting Book About (gasp!) Markets and Speculation" according to Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Ah, the oft-asked question: "How long will people keep buying the lipstick-painted pigs that others are selling?"Until they don't. And that is what lies at the center of fear and greed, humankind's great motivators. (Not love and hate. Those are just variations on the same theme.)Chancellor does an admirable job of making an incredibly boring subject human, emotional, and funny (my apologies to those who think finance and markets are super interesting&. Deja Vu All Over Again As you contemplate the rise and rise of China's planned economy, consider this passage from an anonymous bank official:"We intended first to boost the stock and property markets. Supported by this safety net - rising markets - export-oriented industries were supposed to reshape themselves so they could adapt to a domestic-led economy. This step was then supposed to bring about an enormous growth of assets over every economic segment, followed by an inc. Very entertaining and detailed account of many of history's financial bubbles A. Menon Devil Take the Hindmost, by Edwad Chancellor is, as the title describes a history of financial speculation. It is an entertaining and informative account of many of history's most famed bubbles. The book is split into 9 chapters and focuses on major specific bubbles that were created by financial manias. In reading the book one is reminded of the eerie similarity of the various bubbles and how though the episodes dont repeat, there is clearly much that

From the tulip Colleges of the seventeenth century to the Internet investment clubs of the late twentieth century, speculation has established itself as the most demotic of economic activities. But it's precisely such inevitability that always seems to win out, when "sharply rising prices followed by sudden panic without cause" bring speculative excess to an abrupt end. --Harry C. Since 1990, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen some 8,000 points, from around 2,700 in January 1990 to nearly 11,000 today--a boom by anyone's standards, including Edward Chancellor's. He characterizes the speculative spirit as one that loves freedom, detests cant, and abhors restrictions. Edwards. No matter what his or her current investment outlook is--bull or bear--anyone with capital to invest would do well to spend a thoughtful weekend with this book. "The longest bull

bull market, and our current financial predicament.. Chancellor shows that the impulses that have shaped speculative behavior are at odds with the orthodox theory of efficient markets. A lively and authoritative look at speculation from early modern times to the present.Focusing on speculation as it developed in the world's leading stock markets, Edward Chancellor's story starts with the tulipomania in seventeenth-century Holland, then moves to Britain with accounts of speculative manias such as the South Sea Bubble and the Railway Mania. His comprehensive history is interspersed with trenchant commentary on speculation in the 1990s, including such current issues as emerging markets, Internet and foreign-currency speculation, rogue traders, the great U.S. From the mid-nineteenth century, the narrative turns to the United States, with chapters on the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties, and the revival of speculation since the early 1970s, then portrays the disastrous Bubble Economy of Japan in the 1980s