Tulipmania

I’m starting (as I type this) my Mises Academy online course, “Tulips to Plywood Palaces:
Bubbles in Theory and History,” taught by Dr. Doug French, director at the Mises Institute.

The course description:

Doug French, president of the Mises Institute, will teach a nine-week course, June 1-August 2, 2010, based on his book Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money (Mises Institute 2009). Applying the Austrian theory of money, banking, and business cycles, he will examine the economic, social, and cultural signs of bubbles, examine their causes and the responses, and deal with the spectacular rise and fall of housing and others markets in our own time. He covers Tulipmania, the South Sea bubble, the Mississippi bubble, John Law’s monetary theories and more.
He will offer a narrative of each event with a special focus on the cause and effect. The conventional view is that bubbles in history represent a kind of mass hysteria rooted in animal spirits or irrational exuberance – and that each represents a failing of the market to rationally stabilize investment. French will examine the monetary angle to show that bubbles have a more fundamental relationship to monetary inflation.

Very excited!