Quote for the Week
In the last analysis, it was the public which was chiefly responsible for its own undoing. The stock-market boom was a classic example of the madness of crowds. History records some of the most notorious of these mass movements — the Mississippi Bubble, the South Sea Bubble, the Tulip Mania — and the madness of the ’20’s must certainly be added to the list. The prehistoric tribal eruptions from Central Asia, the Crusades, the medieval dance craze, all these — right down to the Florida boom and the 1929 market madness — were phenomena of mass action under impulses which no science has explored. Such impulses have power to affect any static condition or so-called normal trend. For that reason they deserve consideration by students of economic affairs.
Although there is no scientific cure for these madnesses, there may be potent incantations. I have always thought that much of the evil might have been averted if, in the lamentable era of the New Economics culminating in 1929, even in the very presence of dizzily rising prices, we had all continuously repeated that “two and two still make four.” And I think it would be a salutary thing in the present situation, which in many respects so resembles the ’20’s, if we reminded ourselves of the fact. — Bernard Baruch (source)
From the Archives
Last Call
- Why Being Right Can Make You a Worse Investor – A. Roth
- The Case for Global Investing – Nonmaterial
- 5 Myths and Misunderstandings about Investing in the Stock Market – TKer
- When Scammers Target Seniors – Knowable
- What We Learn from Wear and Tear – Critical Thinker
- Charles Kettering: Nearsighted Visionary and Prolific Inventor – Archbridge
- The End of the Internet – Stratechery
- Is It Too Late to Reduce Catastrophic AI Risk? – Harvard Gazette
- The Real Kevin Bacon – The Pudding