Courtesy of Pam Martens.
In her 2007 book, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, Anne Goldgar writes that “the f1000 one might pay in January 1637 for one hypothetical Admirael van der Eyck bulb,” could have bought “a modest house in Haarlem,” or “nearly three years’ wages” of a master carpenter. Comparing that to U.S. dollars in 2007, the year her book was released, Goldgar says it would be like one tulip bulb selling for $12,000.
Goldgar notes that as historians have looked back, the
tulip mania of the 1630s in Holland has become a “byword for idiocy.” She quotes from a passage written in 1648 by the
historian Theodorus Schrevelius: “I don’t know what kind of angry spirit was
called up from Hell…Our Descendants doubtless will laugh at the human insanity
of our Age, that in our times the Tulip-flowers have been so revered.”
In his 1841
classic on market bubbles, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness
of Crowds, the Scottish journalist Charles Mackay writes this about the
tulip mania in Holland: “The rage among the Dutch to possess them
was so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected…”
Compare that era to America circa 2019 and this April
14 Tweet from Donald Trump:
“If
the Fed had done its job properly, which it has not, the Stock Market would
have been up 5000 to 10,000 additional points…”
The
sitting President of the United States now sees it as his job to boost the
stock market, even as critically-needed legislation for rebuilding the
nation’s crumbling infrastructure falls by the wayside.
…
