A Short History of Financial Euphoria (Whittle) [Hardcover]

John Kenneth Galbraith (Author)

Book Description

Series: Whittle | Publication Date: June 1, 1993

The world-renowned economist reviews the great speculative episodes of the last three centuries, including the calamitous junk-bond follies of the 1980s, and shows how the lessons of history can help people avoid financial calamity. 40,000 first printing. $40,000 ad/promo.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Galbraith's entertaining, wonderfully instructive cautionary essay should be required reading for investors. His focus is "recurrent lapses into financial dementia," reckless speculative episodes fueled by greed, euphoria and investors' delusion that their temporary good fortune is due to their own superior financial acumen. The renowned Harvard economist chronicles a series of "flights into mass insanity," from wild speculation in tulip bulbs in 17th-century Holland through the U.S. stock market crash of 1929, the 1980s mergers-and-acquistions mania and the savings and loan scandal. Comparing these crises, he finds recurring common features, such as evasion of hard realities, new financial instruments presumed to be of stunning novelty and debt that became dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment. His proposed remedy is "enhanced skepticism" on the part of investors and the public.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

No matter what your political leanings or economic beliefs might be, there is no denying that Galbraith is a brilliant writer. In this humorous and thoughtful book, he traces the investor "herd" mentality from Tulipomania, which gripped Holland in the 1630s, through a variety of events and up through the 1987 stock market debacle--which he accurately predicted. Galbraith analyzes the crashes that resulted from these speculative episodes, and he points out that the "mass escape from sanity by people in pursuit of profit," which, in his opinion, is always the cause, is never blamed. A truly excellent book, this is highly recommended.
- C. Christopher Pavek, Putnam, Hayes & Bartlett, Inc. Information Ctr., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (June 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670850284
• ISBN-13: 978-0670850280
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #771,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Kenneth Galbraith who was born in 1908, is the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics Emeritus at Harvard University and a past president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the distinguished author of thirty-one books spanning three decades, including The Affluent Society, The Good Society, and The Great Crash. He has been awarded honorary degrees from Harvard, Oxford, the University of Paris, and Moscow University, and in 1997 he was inducted into the Order of Canada and received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2000, at a White House ceremony, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bubble Story, July 1, 2001

By 

Sergio Da Silva (Brasilia, Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Short History of Financial Euphoria (Penguin Business) (Paperback)

IN THIS SMALL but witty and well-crafted book, Galbraith chronicles the major speculative episodes, from the seventeenth-century tulipmania to the junk-bond follies of the eighties. The book was first published in 1990 and thus the recent dotcom-bubble burst is not covered. Nevertheless, the Harvard professor's book is still worth reading. A reason is that he claims to have identified common patterns in the history of financial euphoria. `In small ways the history of the great speculative boom and its aftermath does change. Much, much more remains the same', he predicts.

The perennial features are these. Some seemingly new and desirable artifact or development captures the financial imagination of a large number of people (say, group 1). The arrival of tulips in Western Europe, gold in Louisiana, the advent of joint-stock companies (corporations), real estate in Florida, or the economic designs of Reagan are all examples. The price of the object of speculation goes up. The object when bought today is worth more tomorrow. This attracts new buyers and assures a further price increase. Those in group 1 are persuaded that the new price-enhancing circumstance is under control, and expect the market to stay up and go up, perhaps indefinitely. The individual or institution that discovered the novelty (in group 2) is thought to be ahead of the mob. Fewer in number, individuals of group 2 perceive the speculative mood of the moment, try to get the maximum reward from the increase as it continues, and plan to be out before the eventual crash. The affluence of group 2 is wrongly associated, by group 1, with a miraculous financial genius. When something triggers the ultimate reversal, group 2 decides now is time to get out. Group 1 finds its illusion abruptly destroyed. Both groups sell or try to sell. The market collapses.

Galbraith observes that, in this process, `speculation buys up the intelligence of those involved'. The crowd converts the individual in group 1 from possessing reasonable good sense to stupidity. Those in group 2 also make errors of vanity by thinking they will beat the speculative game. It seems that `all people are most credulous when they are most happy'. Reputable public and financial opinion reinforces euphoria by condemning those who express doubt or dissent by warning of a crash. The celebrated Yale economist Irving Fisher, for instance, spoke out sharply against Roger Babson, who foresaw the crash of 1929. But the critic must wait until after the crash for any approval, Galbraith laments.

Despite the fact that common features in speculative episodes recur, history counts little because a financial disaster is quickly forgotten by a new, self-confident generation. Something is perceived as a financial novelty merely because the financial memory is short: `financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation'. Insightfully, Galbraith notices that all financial innovation involves the creation of debt leveraged against more limited assets. This is the case of banks, whose debt is leveraged on a given volume of hard cash. This is also the case of the holding companies created in the 1920s, whose stockholders issued bonds and preferred stock to buy other stocks. And this is the case, too, of the junk bonds of the mergers-and-acquisitions mania in the 1980s, when high-risk, higher-interest bonds were issued in greater volume against the credit of the companies being taken over. As Galbraith puts it: `the world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version'.

However a crisis may strike at any moment whenever a debt is perceived to become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment. After the crash, group 1 expresses anger against the `financial genius' of group 2. `Financial genius is before the fall', Galbraith prophesies. Group 1 finally realizes that having more money may mean that a person in group 2 is indifferent to moral constraints. Group 2 could have even gone beyond the law, as far as leverage is concerned. Incarceration of some individuals of group 2 may follow. Leverage is seen as morally disputable at last.

Talks of regulation and reform follow. However, the speculation itself or the aberrant optimism that lay behind it will not be discussed. `Nothing is more remarkable than this: in the aftermath of speculation, the reality will be all but ignored.' Why? Because it is easier for group 1 to blame one individual or a few individuals in group 2 than to take responsibility for its own widespread naivety. And also because there is a need to find a cause for the crash that is external to the market itself. After all, the market is believed to be `a neutral and accurate reflection of external influences; it is not supposed to be subject to an inherent and internal dynamic of error'. The deficit in the federal budget was, for instance, blamed for the 1987 crash. Another anecdotal account of Black Monday has been that the crash was caused by portfolio insurance computer programs which sold stocks as the market went lower.

Galbraith's book is compulsory reading for economists, especially those working on behavioural finance or econophysics. Being an antidote to illusory financial euphoria, the book is thus of interest to the general public as well. Galbraith's own sense of déjà vu towards speculative financial bubbles enabled him to predict the crash of 19 October 1987. People really seem to be intrinsically unable to prevent getting stuck in the error-prone dynamics of bull markets, as in his `bubble story'. But perhaps they have already learned some minor lessons on how to better protect themselves in the aftermath of crashes. Indeed despite the fact that the Black Monday crash was nearly twice as severe as the stock market collapse of 1929, it did not trigger a depression. Likewise the internet-bubble burst of 2000 had a surprisingly modest effect on wealth. Will we finally learn to learn from history?

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for intelligent investors, April 9, 2002

By 

Duke (Midwest, US) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Short History of Financial Euphoria (Penguin Business) (Paperback)

Galbraith paints a picture of the episodes of financial euphoria that allow one to see the seeds of the next bubble being planted. What Galbraith points out are the common themes of market bubbles. In the end, the same script is run as we hear that "this time is different" Although published in 1990, this reads like an epilogue to the tech/internet bubble of 1999-2000. The old saying goes that "what we learn from history is that we do not learn from history." Galbraith gives us the tools to learn from history. In an age of books like "Dow 36,000" and other mania induced work, this classic is a reality touchstone for all serious, sophisticated investors - individual and institutional alike. I would rate this book as a **********, but am limited to ***** (5 stars).

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious Little Book on the Idiocy of the Get-Rich-Quick Mindset!, July 31, 2006

By 

Odysseus (Whitehorse, Yukon Territory) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Short History of Financial Euphoria (Penguin Business) (Paperback)

Galbraith's wonderful little book (Only 110 pages) is a quick guided tour -- with pithy analysis interspersed throughout -- of get-rich-quick movements, and, more importantly, the foolish thinking BEHIND such phenomena. Galbraith takes the reader on brief tours of some of the more notorious financial booms-gone-bad, such as the "Tulip Craze" in Holland and the Banque Royale bust in France in the 1600's, the South Seas "Bubble" of the 1700's, and, more importantly, the numerous episodes throughout American financial history, from Colonial times through the busts of 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1907, 1929 -- and 1987 (Galbraith's book was first published in 1990 -- ten years before the dot-com bust....). The source of these rush-to-riches-gone-sour, argues Galbraith, rests on several ever-consistent, historically re-occurring causes: First, the quest for leverage (i.e. generating more funds than having the means to actually support them) and lavish debt spending; Second, the pathological, recurrent inability of the financial world to learn from the past; Third, the silly notion that the possession of wealth is directly equal to a persons' intelligence (Wealthy individuals, contends Galbraith, are not rich because of brains, but more often through chance and circumstance -- a fact the public ignores at their own peril); Fourth, the incessant human desire to become affluent by the easiest means possible; Fifth, the 'religious' quality Americans consistently perscribe to "the market," i.e. that free enterprise is 'perfect' -- Corruption, loss, and falling markets are due only to "outside forces" (Like 'evil CEO's' or 'government intervention') -- rather than the public's endless supply of gullibility, culpability, and simple greed. The financial world, Galbraith brilliantly contends, is rooted in a quasi-theological outlook: Successful Wall Street moguls are treated as divine shamans; dogmatic faith in the latest financial hoopla is considered a virtue; critics are readily condemned as heretics; and once the bubble bursts, there exists a curious religious playing-out of "Sin-Fall-Guilt-Punishment," whereby the men who we once revered as financial geniuses are quickly strung-up in the court of public opinion -- sacrificial lambs for the public's own short-sightedness. Galbraith warns his readers that money-making innovations in the world of finance are simply worn-out re-workings of very, very old schemes. New bubbles emerge under new guises and fanciful terminology -- but the game remains forever the same. Once one crisis has passed, a new financial rush soon emerges, and the vicious cycle of irrationality and idiocy (Galbraith's terms) begin again. In the end, Galbraith warns his readers to be very wary of those who promise you easy wealth, and should you jump on the latest money-making bandwagon -- and most likely end up losing in the end -- don't blame anyone or anything except............YOURSELF. Excellent book!!