Bubbles and Crashes

1634 – 202456 items

finance
Monkeys trading, feasting and brawling over tulips in “Allegory of Tulip Mania”, c. 1640–1650, a satire on the Dutch tulip craze of 1637. Painting: Jan Brueghel the Younger. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Monkeys trading, feasting and brawling over tulips in “Allegory of Tulip Mania”, c. 1640–1650, a satire on the Dutch tulip craze of 1637. Painting: Jan Brueghel the Younger. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Four centuries of manias and panics

From tulip contracts scribbled in Haarlem taverns in 1637 to Bitcoin in 2017: the times people bid a price far past anything the thing could earn, and the day the next buyer did not turn up.

How to read it

  • Each bubble is a band. They overlap where they really did: Paris and London went mad in the same year, and the dot-com bust ran into the housing boom.

  • The peak and the crash of each bubble sit inside its band. Aftermaths such as the Great Depression get bands of their own.

  • Filter by stocks, banking, property, currency or regulation to follow one thread across the centuries.

Two calendars in 1720

Paris and Amsterdam used the Gregorian calendar in 1720; London still used the Julian, eleven days behind, and began its year on 25 March. The South Sea dates are entered as the English wrote them, so the Commons vote of 2 February 1719/20 lands in 1720, and the timeline lines both cities up on one axis.

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. — Charles Mackay, 1841

Mackay’s own account of tulip mania, as it happens, is one of the herd-made myths this timeline corrects.

Items

  1. Tulip mania

    ≈ 2 years, 7 months

  2. Buyers stop coming in Haarlem

    Haarlem

  3. The Alkmaar auction

    Alkmaar

  4. Florists meet in Amsterdam

    Amsterdam

  5. ≈ 82 years

  6. Mississippi Bubble

    ≈ 1 year, 7 months

  7. Mississippi shares near 10,000 livres

    Rue Quincampoix, Paris

  8. South Sea Bubble

    11 months, 5 days

  9. The Commons choose the South Sea offer

    House of Commons, Westminster

  10. The South Sea Act

  11. The edict of 21 May

  12. The Bubble Act

  13. South Sea stock near £1,000

    Exchange Alley, Cornhill, London

  14. Isaac Newton’s losses

  15. Deadly crush for coin

    Banque royale, rue Vivienne, Paris

  16. South Sea stock collapses

    Exchange Alley, Cornhill, London

  17. John Law flees France

  18. Chancellor Aislabie sent to the Tower

    House of Commons, Westminster

  19. ≈ 120 years

  20. Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions

  21. Railway Mania

    ≈ 3 years

  22. The Railway King falls

    York

  23. Gründerzeit boom

    ≈ 1 year, 10 months

  24. Black Friday on the Vienna Börse

    Palais Ferstel, Vienna

  25. Jay Cooke & Company fails

    Third Street, Philadelphia

  26. The New York Stock Exchange closes

    New York Stock Exchange, Wall Street

  27. The Long Depression in America

    ≈ 5 years, 5 months

  28. ≈ 42 years

  29. The great bull market

    ≈ 8 years, 2 months

  30. The Great Depression

    ≈ 3 years, 7 months

  31. The Dow peaks at 381.17

  32. Black Thursday

    New York Stock Exchange, Wall Street

  33. Black Tuesday

    New York Stock Exchange, Wall Street

  34. The Creditanstalt fails

    Vienna

  35. The Dow bottoms at 41.22

  36. The Dow regains its 1929 peak

  37. The Plaza Accord

    Plaza Hotel, New York

  38. Japan’s bubble economy

    ≈ 4 years, 2 months

  39. The Nikkei peaks at 38,915.87

    Tokyo Stock Exchange, Kabutochō

  40. Dot-com bubble

    ≈ 7 years, 2 months

  41. Netscape goes public

  42. “Irrational exuberance”

    Washington, DC

  43. US housing bubble

    ≈ 9 years

  44. Asian financial crisis

    ≈ 1 year, 5 months

  45. Thailand floats the baht

    Bank of Thailand, Bangkok

  46. Korea takes an IMF rescue

    Seoul

  47. Suharto resigns

    Merdeka Palace, Jakarta

  48. Wall Street rescues LTCM

    Federal Reserve Bank of New York

  49. The Nasdaq peaks at 5,048.62

  50. Pets.com shuts down

    San Francisco

  51. The Nasdaq bottoms at 1,114.11

  52. Global financial crisis

    ≈ 1 year, 7 months

  53. BNP Paribas freezes three funds

    Paris

  54. The run on Northern Rock

    Northern Rock, Newcastle upon Tyne

  55. Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy

    Lehman Brothers, 745 Seventh Avenue

  56. “God bless Iceland”

    Reykjavík

  57. Bitcoin’s 2017 run

    ≈ 1 year, 5 months

  58. Bitcoin nears 20,000 dollars

  59. The Nikkei finally passes its 1989 peak

    Tokyo Stock Exchange, Kabutochō