Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises

Manias, Panics, and Crashes is a scholarly but highly readable trip through the history of financial crises from the Mississippi and South-Sea bubbles to the June, 1974, failures of the Herstatt Bank of Cologne and the Franklin Bank of New York. Kindleberger’s goal is to illustrate the causes and consequences of mania (a bubble in asset prices driven by an irrational excitement about business possibilities), panic (a sudden, equally irrational fright) and crash (a collapse in asset prices brought on by the mindless excesses of the mania and then the panic). Executives who read Manias will find insight in his study of 250 years of financial crisis and will make reference to its anecdotes and arguments often in their careers. – John McCallum, Ivey Business Journal

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