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Book Description

The new, fully-updated edition of the respected guide to understanding financial extremes, evaluating investment opportunities, and identifying future bubbles

Now in its second edition, Boombustology is an authoritative, up-to-date guide on the history of booms, busts, and financial cycles. Engaging and accessible, this popular book helps investors, policymakers, and analysts navigate the radical uncertainty that plagues today’s uncertain investing and economic environment. Author Vikram Mansharamani, an experienced global equity investor and prominent Harvard University lecturer, presents his multi-disciplinary framework for identifying financial bubbles before they burst. Moving beyond the typical view of booms and busts as primarily economic occurrences, this innovative book offers a multidisciplinary approach that utilizes microeconomic, macroeconomic, psychological, political, and biological lenses to spot unsustainable dynamics. It gives the reader insights into the dynamics that cause soaring financial markets to crash. Cases studies range from the 17th Century Dutch tulip mania to the more recent US housing collapse.

The numerous cross-currents driving today’s markets—trade wars, inverted yield curves, currency wars, economic slowdowns, dangerous debt dynamics, populism, nationalism, as well as the general uncertainties in the global economy—demand that investors, policymakers, and analysts be on the lookout for a forthcoming recession, market correction, or worse.

An essential resource for anyone interested in financial markets, the second edition of Boombustology:

  • Adopts multiple lenses to understand the dynamics of booms, busts, bubbles, manias, crashes
  • Utilizes the common characteristics of past bubbles to assist in identifying future financial extremes
  • Presents a set of practical indicators that point to a financial bubble, enabling readers to gauge the likelihood of an unsustainable boom
  • Offers two new chapters that analyze the long-term prospects for Indian markets and the distortions being caused by the passive investing boom
  • Includes a new foreword by James Grant, legendary editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer

A comprehensive exploration of how bubbles form and why they burst, Boombustology, 2nd Edition is packed with a wealth of new and updated information for individual and institutional investors, academics, students, policymakers, risk-managers, and corporate managers alike.

Table of Contents

  1. Cover
  2. Foreword
  3. PREFACE: Is There A Bubble In Boom-Bust Books?
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. INTRODUCTION: The Study of Financial Extremes
    1. Secrets vs. Mysteries
    2. Different Problems Necessitate Different Approaches
    3. Uncovering a Mystery
    4. Notes
  6. PART I: Five Lenses
    1. CHAPTER 1: Microeconomic Perspectives
      1. “Random Walks” and Accurate Prices: The Efficient Market Hypothesis
      2. Unstable and Inefficient: The Theory of Reflexivity
      3. Consolidating Two Factors of Detection
      4. Notes
    2. CHAPTER 2: Macroeconomic Perspectives
      1. The Magnifying Power of Leverage
      2. Collateral Rates and Debt Dynamics
      3. Hyman Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis
      4. Debt Deflation and Asset Prices
      5. Quantitative Easing
      6. The Austrian Business Cycle Theory
      7. Integrating the Macro Lenses
      8. Notes
    3. CHAPTER 3: The Psychology Lens
      1. The Study of Irrationality Is Born
      2. Heuristics Gone Wild: How Rules of Thumb Lead Us Astray
      3. Our Flawed Brains: Other Cognitive Issues
      4. The Certainty of Uncertainty
      5. Notes
    4. CHAPTER 4: Political Foundations
      1. Can Anyone Own Anything?
      2. Venezuelan and Soviet Nationalization: Communism at Work
      3. Prices: To Guide or Be Guided?
      4. Political Distortions of Property and Price
      5. Tariffs and Trade Wars
      6. Notes
    5. CHAPTER 5: Biological Frameworks
      1. Revealing the Maturity of an Unsustainable Boom
      2. How Micro Simplicity Drives Macro Complexity
      3. Emergent Behavior in Human Swarms
      4. The Blind Leading the Blind
      5. Notes
  7. PART II: Historical Case Studies
    1. CHAPTER 6: Tulipomania
      1. The Uniqueness of Tulips
      2. Fertile Soil for Bubble Formation
      3. The Boombustology of Tulipomania
      4. The Multilens Look
      5. Notes
    2. CHAPTER 7: The Great Depression
      1. Castles in the Sand
      2. From Booming Twenties to Busted Thirties
      3. The Boombustology of the Great Depression
      4. The Multilens Look
      5. Notes
    3. CHAPTER 8: The Japanese Boom and Bust
      1. Japan(ese) as Different
      2. An Overview of the Bubble Economy
      3. The Boombustology of the Japanese Boom and Bust
      4. The Multilens Look
      5. Notes
    4. CHAPTER 9: The Asian Financial Crisis
      1. Boom Times in East Asia
      2. Thailand Catches the Flu
      3. The Boombustology of the Asian Financial Crisis
      4. The Multilens Look
      5. Notes
    5. CHAPTER 10: The U.S. Housing Boom and Bust
      1. “Safe as Houses”
      2. The Music Stops
      3. The Boombustology of the U.S. Housing Boom and Bust
      4. The Multilens Look
      5. Notes
    6. CHAPTER 11: China's Credit-Fueled Investment Boom
      1. Tendencies toward Equilibrium
      2. Leverage, Cheap Money, and Potential Deflation
      3. Conspicuous Consumption and Overconfidence
      4. Rights, Moral Hazard, and Political Distortion
      5. Consensus, Silent Leadership, and Epidemics
      6. The Unsustainable Chinese Story
      7. The Boombustology of China's Credit-Fueled Investment Boom and Bust
      8. The Multilens Look
      9. Notes
  8. PART III: Looking Ahead
    1. CHAPTER 12: Spotting Bubbles Before They Burst
      1. Reflexivity and Self-Fulfilling Dynamics
      2. Leverage, Financial Innovation, and Cheap Money
      3. Overconfidence
      4. Policy-Driven Distortions
      5. Epidemics and Emergence
      6. Conclusions
      7. Notes
    2. CHAPTER 13: Boombustology in Action
      1. Distinguishing Potential and Reality
      2. Capital Markets Considerations
      3. Population, Debt, and Investment
      4. India's Versailles
      5. Culture, Vocation, and Underdevelopment
      6. Automation: Why It's Too Late for India
      7. “Make in India”: The Wrong Playbook for Development
      8. India’s Elusive Middle Class: Disappointment Ahead?
      9. Notes
  9. CONCLUSION: Hedgehogs, Foxes, and the Dangers of Making Predictions
    1. Blinded by Focus
    2. Notes
  10. ADDENDUMA: Passive Investing Bubble?
    1. Feedback Loops and Reflexivity
    2. Distortion of the Market
    3. Oversimplification as Overconfidence
    4. Investment and Interest Rates
    5. Herd Mentality and Silent Leadership
    6. Too Much of a Good Thing
    7. Notes
  11. About the Author
  12. Index
  13. End User License Agreement