Book Summary

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles

by William Quinn and John D. Turner
Cambridge University Press (2020)

Main Idea

Quinn and Turner use the analogy of a “fire” to describe speculative bubbles. A fire is “destructive, self-perpetuating and difficult to control once it begins.” And just as a fire needs oxygen, fuel, and heat, a speculative bubble needs assets that are easy to trade (i.e., oxygen), plenty of money and credit (fuel), and speculation (heat). And it needs a spark, which usually comes from government action or new technology.

The authors describe how these key elements played out in 11 speculative booms since the 1700s:

• French Mississippi Bubble (1719 to 1720)
• British South Sea Bubble (1719 to 1720)
• British emerging market mines bubble (1824 to 1826)
• U.K. Railway Mania (1844 to1846)
• Australian Land Boom (1886 to 1893)
• The U.K. Bicycle Mania (1895 to 1898)
• U.S. Roaring Twenties (1920 to 1931)
• Japanese stock and real estate bubble (1985 to 1992)
• U.S. Dot-Com Bubble (1995 to 2001)
• U.S. and European Subprime bubble (2003 to 2010)
• the 2007 and 2015 Chinese stock bubbles.

Who Wrote the Book

William Quinn is a Lecturer in Finance at Queen’s University Belfast, where he conducts research on financial bubbles and crises. John Turner is a Professor of Finance and Financial History at Queen’s University Belfast. His research focuses on the long-run evolution and development of banking, banking crises, bubbles, and financial markets.

Key Points

• The word “bubble” originated from Shakespeare in the ‘All the world’s a stage’ speech from his comedy As You Like It. He uses “bubble” to mean “fragile, empty or worthless, just like a soap bubble.” Beginning in 1719, with the South Sea Bubble, writers like Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift used “bubble” to describe new companies that were worthless and empty.
• Charles Mackay’s 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which gives a vivid account of the foolish speculation during the South Sea Bubble, is mostly fiction: almost none of the anecdotes can be substantiated.
• In 2008 The Economist described the British Railway Mania as “arguably the greatest bubble in history.”
• During the British Railway Mania of 1848, railway shares rose from constituting 23 percent of total stock market value to 71 percent. So many new speculators began buying railway stocks that 15 new stock exchanges opened in England during the mania to meet the demand. (Half of them shut down when the mania ended.)
• Fueling the railway bubble was the Bank of England’s low discount rate. At 2.5 percent in 1844, it was the lowest it had ever been in the 150 years of the bank’s history. Investors bought railway stocks to earn a higher yield.
• The Japanese government deliberately sparked the land and stock bubbles during the late 1980s to create a boom. Japan lowered interest rates, gave tax breaks to real estate developers, and allowed banks to accept land as collateral, which increased the amount of lending they could do, which was usually plowed back into more land and stocks.
• The authors believe that the Dot-com bubble during the late 1990s had many good economic benefits, despite the 8-month recession that followed it. The bubble directed a lot of money into innovative companies and motivated smart entrepreneurs to create new companies. It also supplied the capital needed to build internet communications, which have been so critical for our lives today.
• Between 2000 and 2008 in both Ireland and Spain, more than one new home was built for every new inhabitant in the country.
• In the U.K., the bank Northern Rock marketed “Together mortgages,” which allowed individuals to borrow up to 125 percent of their home value, targeting borrowers who could not afford to buy a home or even furnish it.
• The Chinese stock market bubbles resembled the South Sea and Mississippi bubbles of 1720, where the bubbles were created deliberately tbo offload government debt onto stockholders.

Conclusion

Bubbles are much easier to see after they collapse than during the heat and smoke of a speculative fire. But this book gives us three elements to look out for.