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A Short History of Financial Euphoria (Whittle)
by: John Kenneth Galbraith

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.645
EAN: 9780140238563
ISBN: 0140238565
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 128
Publication Date: July 01, 1994
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sales Rank: 17634
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
World-renowned economist Galbraith, the bestselling author of The Affluent Society, reviews great speculative booms of the last three centuries, including the junk-bond follies of the 1980s. With wisdom and wit, he shows how the lessons of history can help us avoid financial calamity. 'Entertaining in its instructiveness.'--The Boston Globe.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- This is a great read
How appropriate this book is, given the recent real estate bubble burst. It is a short study of the historical bursting of bubbles. John Galbraith is a renowned economist, and admits he can't predict when bubbles will burst, just that they will. The language you hear during the upward trend of bubbles is exactly the same - that "it" will never go down. People get into a frenzy or euphoric state and ignore that fact that the bubble will ultimately burst, as it always does. This book was written prior to the Stock Market crash of 1987, the dot com era, the more recent real estate bubble, which ultimately is the root of our current economic woes. This was a very quick read and I enjoyed it tremendously. A friend of mine lent me his copy to read a few years ago, and the recent crash of the real estate market led me to remember how much I enjoyed the book that I bought it for myself to reread.

Rating:

- Bubble, "mass insanity", euphoria, crash, "mass memory loss"
"A Short History of Financial Euphoria: Financial Genius is Before the Fall" is a book that every financial manager must be required to read. Every financial company must have one copy in its library.

The book is powerful in its explanation and predictions of financial speculative episodes. In eight brief chapters, (I wish I could do that), JK Galbraith describes the financial euphoria preceding major financial collapses starting with the Tulipomania in the Netherlands in the 1600s and ending with October 1987.

All crashes have common features. First, and nearly always, is a reinvention of a financial instrument sold to investors as the blockbuster wealth-creator of all time. People buy into the instrument in herds, creating a speculative bubble, which in turn leads to "mass insanity." Two speculative behaviors characterize all financial euphoria. One involves investors who believe the ... Read More

Rating:

- 4.5 stars-Galbraith and Adam Smith agree that banker financed speculation is a grave threat to capitalism
Galbraith has written an excellent little book on the negative impacts of speculation on the American economy.The speculative dangers to free enterprise restarted with the Reagan administration's deregulation and privatization of the financial sector of the economy in the early 1980's.Galbraith's analysis is completely applicable to the Michael Milkin-Ivan Boesky directed junk bond speculation of the mid to late 1980's that led to the collapse of so many banks and S and L's in the 1989-1991 time period,as well as the Dot com bombs and NASDAQ(DOW) meltdown of 2000-2002 period, and the subprime mortgage backed bonds folly of the 2003-? period that also witnessed the bankers' reflating of the DOW bubble(2003-2007) and Ben Bernanke's 1.2 trillion dollar attempted bailout of Wall Street that simply created another bubble in oil and commodoties while annihilating the value of the dollar.Galbraith, like Adam ... Read More

Rating:

- Entertaining, but of little value
Yes, Galbraith predicted the '87 recession- but he did so throughout much of the 1980s, during a period of tremendous growth and wealth building. When the '87 recession did occur- and let us recall that it was exceptionally short and shallow, lasting only until April of 1988- he gleefully announced his vindication.

Galbraith built his reputation on his 1955 book on the Great Depression, written at a time when Economics was in large part a historical and largely literary field, well before the econometrics explosion of the 70s, 80 and beyond. Modern economists are as much mathematicians as anything, and the sophistication of the tools they use today is far beyond anything Galbraith had at his disposal in 1955.

In large part because of the sophistication of the tools available, the recessions of the past 20 years have been much shorter and milder than those of past years. One only has to ... Read More

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