Crashes and Crises: Lessons from a History of Financial Disasters

Investigate two of the most notorious con men who ever lived: Charles Ponzi, after whom the Ponzi scheme is named, and "Match King" Ivar Kreuger, who employed an elaborate variant of Ponzi's swindle. Analyze the three ingredients that most Ponzi schemes share. Above all, learn to identify and be wary of investments that are too good to be true.

Contrast the freewheeling financial market of today with the staid system of the immediate post-World War II era. Were financial markets more stable in the past than they are now? How did the present system evolve? What type of market is normal: the steady and predictable kind or the chaotic and sometimes destructive one? In answering these questions, discover why we live in an era of busts.

Relive the "Wild West" days of the British stock market in the early 18th century, when a financially-strapped government and a public craze for investing created ideal conditions for one of history's most brazen stock manipulators. Trace John Blunt's use of the South Sea Company - and bribery - to generate a stock-buying frenzy, making him fabulously rich - until the bubble inevitably burst.

Delve into the details of the Mississippi bubble, an early 18th-century financial crisis sparked by speculation in the anticipated wealth of French Louisiana. Learn how the bubble's instigator, John Law, a Scottish gambler and convicted murderer, gained control of the French economy and pushed ideas that were ahead of their time - so far ahead that they plunged France into economic collapse.