Financial history from primary sources
Long-form writing on the crises, bubbles, and institutions that made modern finance — built from peer-reviewed research, central-bank archives, and contemporaneous reporting. Edited by Sam.
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The 1929 Crash: Black Tuesday and the Road to the Great Depression
The Wall Street crash of October 1929 marked the end of the Roaring Twenties and the beginning of the worst…
Tulip Mania: The World's First Speculative Bubble (1637)
How a rare flower bulb became the center of history's most famous speculative frenzy in the Dutch Golden Age, with…
The Flash Crash: When Algorithms Broke the Market in 36 Minutes (2010)
On May 6, 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged nearly 1,000 points in minutes before recovering almost as quickly.
Jesse Livermore: The Boy Plunger of Wall Street
The extraordinary life of Jesse Livermore -- from teenage bucket shop trader to the man who shorted the 1929 crash,…
Latest→
Hungarian Pengo Hyperinflation: Worst Monetary Collapse, 1945-46
Between August 1945 and July 1946, prices in Hungary doubled every fifteen hours and the National Bank issued a 100 quintillion pengo note — the largest denomination of currency in…
Historical records
The Hunt Brothers Silver Corner: The 1980 Attempt to Buy Silver
Between 1973 and January 1980, the Texas oil heirs Nelson Bunker, William Herbert, and Lamar Hunt accumulated paper and physical silver totalling almost a tenth of the world's above-ground supply,…
Historical records
Latin American Debt Crisis: Mexico's 1982 Moratorium, Lost Decade
On 13 August 1982 Mexico's finance minister Jesús Silva Herzog flew to Washington and told the US Treasury his country could not pay.
Historical records
The Panic of 1873: How Jay Cooke's Railroad Bonds Broke America
On 18 September 1873 Jay Cooke & Co — the bank that financed the Union war effort — collapsed under unsold Northern Pacific bonds, shut the New York Stock Exchange…
Historical records
The Penn Central Bankruptcy: The 1970 Failure That Reshaped the Fed
On 21 June 1970, the Penn Central Transportation Company filed the largest corporate bankruptcy in American history to that point.
Historical records
The 2023 Banking Crisis: SVB, Signature, Credit Suisse in a Month
Silicon Valley Bank lost $42 billion of deposits in a single Thursday and was seized by the FDIC on Friday.
Historical records
The BCCI Collapse: Bank of Crooks and Criminals, 1972-1991
On 5 July 1991 regulators in seven countries shuttered the Bank of Credit and Commerce International — a $20 billion lender with branches across 73 countries that had spent two…
Historical records
The Riksbank: How a 1668 Bank Failure Built the Oldest Central Bank
Stockholms Banco, Europe's first issuer of printed banknotes, collapsed in 1668 after over-printing kreditivsedlar far beyond its copper reserves.
Historical records
Crises & Crashes→
Latin American Debt Crisis: Mexico's 1982 Moratorium, Lost Decade
On 13 August 1982 Mexico's finance minister Jesús Silva Herzog flew to Washington and told the US Treasury his country…
The Panic of 1873: How Jay Cooke's Railroad Bonds Broke America
On 18 September 1873 Jay Cooke & Co — the bank that financed the Union war effort — collapsed under…
The Penn Central Bankruptcy: The 1970 Failure That Reshaped the Fed
On 21 June 1970, the Penn Central Transportation Company filed the largest corporate bankruptcy in American history to that point.
The 2023 Banking Crisis: SVB, Signature, Credit Suisse in a Month
Silicon Valley Bank lost $42 billion of deposits in a single Thursday and was seized by the FDIC on Friday.
The BCCI Collapse: Bank of Crooks and Criminals, 1972-1991
On 5 July 1991 regulators in seven countries shuttered the Bank of Credit and Commerce International — a $20 billion…
Bubbles & Manias→
The Japanese Asset Bubble: When Tokyo Was Worth More Than California (1985-1990)
How the Plaza Accord, ultra-low interest rates, and a culture of financial invincibility inflated Japan's stock and real estate markets to absurd heights before a crash that produced the longest…
Historical records
The Dot-Com Bubble: Irrational Exuberance and the Internet Gold Rush (1995-2000)
How the promise of the internet fueled a speculative mania that drove the NASDAQ to 5,048 before a crash that wiped out $5 trillion in market value and reshaped the…
Historical records
The South Sea Bubble: When Britain Gambled on a Trading Company
The rise and collapse of the South Sea Company in 1720 ruined thousands of British investors, famously including Isaac Newton, and exposed the dangers of government-backed financial schemes.
Historical records
The Railway Mania: Britain's Victorian Tech Bubble (1840s)
How a revolutionary new technology sparked a speculative frenzy in 1840s Britain, with eerie parallels to the dot-com bubble 150 years later.
Historical records
Tulip Mania: The World's First Speculative Bubble (1637)
How a rare flower bulb became the center of history's most famous speculative frenzy in the Dutch Golden Age, with single bulbs trading for the price of canal houses.
Historical records
The Mississippi Bubble: John Law and the First Paper Money Catastrophe (1716-1720)
How a Scottish gambler convinced France to bet its entire economy on paper money and a colonial trading monopoly, triggering history's first hyperinflationary collapse.
Historical records
Policy & Regulation→
The Plaza Accord: When Five Nations Moved the Dollar (1985)
How five finance ministers secretly agreed at the Plaza Hotel to depreciate the US dollar, triggering a 50% decline against the yen and setting in motion the chain of events…
Historical records
The Glass-Steagall Act (1933): The Wall Between Banking and Speculation
How the Banking Act of 1933 erected a firewall between commercial and investment banking, reshaping American finance for over six decades before its repeal.
Market Histories
Market Innovation→
The Riksbank: How a 1668 Bank Failure Built the Oldest Central Bank
Stockholms Banco, Europe's first issuer of printed banknotes, collapsed in 1668 after over-printing kreditivsedlar far beyond its copper reserves.
Historical records
Bank of Amsterdam: The Wisselbank and Modern Money (1609-1820)
Founded on 31 January 1609 by the city of Amsterdam, the Wisselbank imposed order on a chaos of 800 coin types by inventing a stable, abstract unit of account called…
Historical records
Lloyd's of London: How a Coffee House Became the World's Insurance Market (1686-Present)
In 1686, a coffee house on Tower Street served ship captains and merchants who gathered to share news and place bets on voyages.
Historical records
Luca Pacioli and Double-Entry Bookkeeping: The Accounting Revolution That Made Capitalism Possible (1494)
In 1494, a Franciscan friar named Luca Pacioli published a 615-page mathematics encyclopedia that included a 27-page section codifying double-entry bookkeeping.
Historical records
The Buttonwood Agreement: How 24 Brokers Under a Tree Created the New York Stock Exchange (1792)
On 17 May 1792, twenty-four stockbrokers gathered beneath a buttonwood tree on Wall Street and signed a two-sentence agreement that would become the foundation of the New York Stock Exchange,…
Historical records
Alexander Hamilton and the Birth of American Credit: How a Dinner Table Bargain Created the US Sovereign Bond Market (1790)
In 1790 the young United States was a fiscal wreck: $54 million in federal debt, $25 million in state debts, and creditors from Amsterdam to rural Pennsylvania unpaid.
Historical records
Key Figures→
John Law: The Scottish Gambler Who Invented Paper Money (1671-1729)
Born in Edinburgh in 1671 to a goldsmith-banker, John Law killed a man in a London duel, escaped a death sentence, spent fifteen years at the card tables of Europe,…
Historical records
The Fugger Dynasty: How Jakob Fugger Became the Richest Man in History (1459-1525)
Jakob Fugger of Augsburg built history's greatest fortune by monopolizing European copper and silver mining while financing Habsburg emperors.
Historical records
Jesse Livermore: The Boy Plunger of Wall Street
The extraordinary life of Jesse Livermore -- from teenage bucket shop trader to the man who shorted the 1929 crash, and the personal demons that led to his tragic end.
Market Histories
George Soros: The Man Who Broke the Bank of England (1992)
How George Soros bet $10 billion against the British pound on Black Wednesday, forced the UK out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, and earned $1 billion in a single…
Historical records
Market Structure→
Macro Events→
Hungarian Pengo Hyperinflation: Worst Monetary Collapse, 1945-46
Between August 1945 and July 1946, prices in Hungary doubled every fifteen hours and the National Bank issued a 100 quintillion pengo note — the largest denomination of currency in…
Historical records
The Continental Currency: Not Worth a Continental (1775-1783)
Between June 1775 and November 1779 the Second Continental Congress printed roughly $241 million in paper dollars to pay a war it could not tax for.
Historical records
The Kipper und Wipper: Thirty Years War Coinage Debasement
Between 1619 and 1623, princes across the Holy Roman Empire melted down good silver coins and restruck them with base metals to fund the opening campaigns of the Thirty Years…
Historical records
The Suez Crisis: How America's Financial Weapon Ended the British Empire (1956)
When Britain invaded Egypt to reclaim the Suez Canal in 1956, the United States responded not with troops but with financial warfare — selling sterling, blocking IMF credits, and threatening…
Historical records
The Nixon Shock: How One Sunday Night Speech Ended the Gold Standard (1971)
On the evening of 15 August 1971, Richard Nixon told the world the dollar would no longer be convertible to gold — a 15-minute address that dissolved the Bretton Woods…
Historical records
Financial history from primary sources. Edited by Sam.