Financial History Issue 132 (Winter 2020) | Page 21

be sold at high prices. If the project went to actual subscription phase, more money would go through promoters’ hands, and if prices of the shares rose, there were more chances for astute operators to fleece inves- tors. Of course, not all promoters were astute, and many were ruined themselves. That’s how it is in all investment manias. Unfortunately, we simply don’t have any systematic data on what happened with the new projects of the South Sea Bubble era. The main issue in investing is the degree of plausibility of new ventures that should be demanded. After all, there was some plausibility to the stories told by the various people who “sold” the Brooklyn Bridge. And there is some plausibility in the emails telling us about a forgotten inheritance, of which we can get a large chunk by assisting the senders of the spam. And there was even greater plausibility in the stories that Adam Neumann told in building up WeWork. The key issue is human judgment of what is sensible. At the peak of a mania, it is often dif- ficult to tell the difference between satire and reality. As just one example from our era, consider WeWork’s stated mission to “elevate the world’s consciousness.” Several compilations of South Sea Bubble projects list three for building or emptying toilets. Carswell in his book says ads for those ven- tures were “inserted as pure jokes, which have imposed only on historians” (p. 117). But they may not have been jokes, as they were treated seriously by most contempo- raries (cf. Mist’s Weekly Journal, February 27, 1720). And then there is the South Sea scheme itself, the centerpiece of the South Sea Bubble. That is where the main money flows were concentrated, and by some mea- sures it was the most preposterous of all financial proposals of that era. But we don’t treat it here. Some of the seemingly preposterous small projects of the South Sea Bubble are not all that farcical when considered in the context of that era. Alchemy was still being taken seriously, and even Isaac Newton had devoted some years to it a couple of decades earlier. So extracting silver out of lead was not as absurd then as it is now. Similarly, perpetual motion was far more respectable then, and patents for it contin- ued to be granted in Britain into the early 19th century. Thus, simply looking at the stated aims of various bubbles from 1720 is rather misleading. And the vast majority of the projects were for relatively mundane businesses, such as trade or insurance, which were developing rapidly. Thus, there is some ground for con- sidering the many minor bubbles of the South Sea Bubble as outgrowths of the exuberant optimism of that era. And they are not necessarily more absurd than many examples from the dot-com era, like eToys or Webvan, or the more recent WeWork fiasco. Even the fact that most of the South Sea projects were dishonest in design is not unusual, as widespread fraud has been typical of investment manias. One study in early 2018 characterized over 80% of the ICOs as “outright scams” (Kharif). Further, while bubbles have a very negative image, they have made posi- tive contributions to society, by spurring development of new technologies and new business models. Yet, to twist the famous quote of Mae West, “too much of a good thing” is not always “wonderful.” In investments, exces- sive credulity all too often leads to panics and crashes. And those are sometimes fol- lowed by costly and painful recessions or depressions. So can we use history to help develop guidelines for detecting dangerous bubbles? The task is certainly not easy, and it seems unlikely that a foolproof method can be found. But one approach is to try to develop a gullibility index. One element of it might be the susceptibility of people to those spam emails or phone calls that offer a share in some forgotten inheritance. Another might be the expectations of prof- its that passive corporate investments can achieve, which tend to soar during bubbles, with the 100% annual return promised in the Oldmixon/Mackay tale not unusual. Yet another might be derived from the nature of the new projects being offered to the public. What we find in the South Sea Bubble as well as in other manias is a myriad of imitative ventures without any innovative contribution, concocted out of nothing by promoters with no successes in their records. (Think of the hundreds of ICOs, for a modern example.) Many standard approaches to detect- ing bubbles rely on looking for dangerous levels of leverage in the financial system. However, leverage is not easy to measure, since it can show up in various ways and in unexpected places (largely in the “shadow banking system” prior to the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008). A gullibility index might be useful, since it is the rise in investors’ hopes that leads to extensions of credit, which is what leverage is about. Thus, there might be ways to use historical knowledge to help us prepare for the future. Credulity is basic to human nature, and likely essen- tial to stimulating progress. But we could benefit from being able to rein it in. The famous “undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is” likely never existed. But this memorable phrase is a nice way to keep reminding the public about excessive gullibility.  Andrew Odlyzko has had a long career in research and research management at Bell Labs, AT&T Labs and, most recently, at the University of Minnesota, where he built an interdisciplinary research center and is now a Professor in the School of Mathematics. He has written over 150 technical papers in computational com- plexity, cryptography, number theory, combinatorics, coding theory, analysis, probability theory and related fields. In recent years he has also been working in electronic commerce, economics of data networks and economic history, especially on diffusion of technological innovation. Sources Carswell, John. The South Sea Bubble. 2nd ed. Sutton Publishing Ltd. 1993. Chancellor, Edward. Devil Take the Hind- most: A History of Financial Speculation. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1999. Kharif, Olga. “How’s That ICO Working Out? Breaking Down the Biggest ICOs From the Past Few Years.” Bloomberg Business Week. December 17, 2018. Mackay, Charles. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. London: Richard Bentley. 1841. Odlyzko, Andrew M. “Bubbles, Gullibility and Other Challenges for Economics, Psychology, Sociology and Information Sciences.” First Monday. Vol. 15, No. 9. September 2010. Oldmixon, John. The History of England: During the Reigns of King William and Queen Mary, Queen Anne, King George I. Being the Sequel of the Reigns of the Stuarts. T. Cox. 1735. Scott, William R. The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-stock Companies to 1720. Cam- bridge University Press. 1910–12. www.MoAF.org  |  Winter 2020  |  FINANCIAL HISTORY  19