Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases In the Supply of Money

The housing bubble was hardly the first in human history. What's eluded historians is the same issue that eludes commentators today: the underlying cause of bubbles.
This book is the first (and only) book to solve the mystery of the most famous bubble in world history: the tulipmania of 17th-century Netherlands. It is a legendary event, but explanations for it have been lacking. Most historians just blame irrational exuberance, free markets, and an unleashed aristocracy.
Dougl French takes a different route: he follows the money to prove that the bubble resulted from a government intervention that dramatically exploded the money supply — not altogether different from modern bubbles.
This book was French's master's thesis, written under the direction of Murray Rothbard and examining three of the most famous speculative-bubble episodes in history through the lens of Austrian business-cycle theory.
Although each of these episodes is well documented elsewhere, this book examines the monetary interventions that engendered them; and it shows that government intervention caused not just the Mississippi and the South Sea bubbles but tulipmania as well.
Tulipmania was unique in that it was the sound-money policy of the Dutch combined with free-coinage laws that led to an acute increase in the supply of money and fostered an atmosphere ripe for speculation and malinvestment, manifesting itself in the intense trading of tulip bulbs.
Although these episodes occurred centuries ago, readers will find the events eerily similar to today's bubbles and busts: low interest rates, easy credit terms, widespread public participation, bankrupt governments, price inflation, frantic attempts by government to keep the booms going, and government bailouts of companies after the crash. When will we learn?
To get off the boom-and-bust ride, we first need to understand the causes and effects of the business cycle. This book shows us how bubbles really happen.