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The Secret History of the South Sea Bubble
The Secret History of the South Sea Bubble Author:Malcolm Balen From the Publisher "The greatest financial scandal in history was not the collapse of Enron or WorldCom, not a piece of insider trading from the 1980s, not a hedge fund leveraged to a trillion dollars or a crooked offshore account. It was bigger than all of them combined. The fraud entangled royalty, politicians, professional classes, gamblers a... more »nd con-men. Its effects were so widespread, finally, that it became easier to cover it up than publicly to point the finger of blame. A few years later, the only sign that it had happened at all was a phrase that entered the language to describe unsound financial speculation, a "bubble"." "The South Sea Bubble was a share scheme allowed to run crazily out of control. It was masterminded by an unscrupulous Englishman who saw a route to untold riches selling shares in a valueless company. The South Sea Company was supposed to establish a lucrative trade in silver and spices between England and the Americas. But there was a problem hidden from investors: for almost the entire duration of its sorry history the Company didn't own a boat." For the first time Malcolm Balen tells the dramatic full story of how the fraud was carried out and covered up. The pipe dream of wealth in the Americas and Mississippi is the mother of all share scandals that follow. Every time a company falsifies its accounts, misstates its business strategy, attempts to corrupt public officials, and, above all else, lies about its level of indebtedness, it is following the story of the South Sea Company.« less