Transatlantic Speculations

About this book

"Davies's book examines the financial panics of 1873, considering both the financial speculations born of exuberance that led to these panics and the interpretative speculations born of the crises, and exploring what this in turn reveals about contemporary notions of the world economy and transnational economic entanglement. Davies begins by exploring the way in which information acted at first as a legitimating factor, with manuals and market reports explaining the nature of securities trading and making it not only intelligible, but seemingly profitable and attractive as well. She goes on to look at the role that financial reportage and the emergent financial press created a market for information, and the role the spreading or the consolidation of information could effect the actual market. This imbalance of information played a critical role in the reaction of the bubble that eventually burst and caused the panic of 1873. But the panic did not rectify the asymmetry of information, as is reflected in the differing explanations assigned to the panic on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and the differing responses to it. While Germany and Austria blamed American speculators, until changing targets in the grip of an anti-semitic fervor, the Americans were largely unaware of the panic in Europe, and instead ascribed corruption and amorality to all ethnicities and classes. Thus, shareholder rights were soon granted sweeping protections in Austria and Germany, while in the United States the shareholders were actively blamed for the crash, and were accorded far fewer legal protections"--