At regular intervals since the early modern age, the get rich quick syndrome has swept millions of credulous souls to the very extremes of ambition and greed in their desire to amass wealth.

The symptoms of such behaviour have often appeared during the build-up to a market crash, when months or even years of gains have been wiped out in hours. This is referred to as the 'boom and bust scenario' in which there is an economic bubble, followed by a crash.

In this book we examine several of the remarkable events that have occurred between the seventeenth century and present day, which culminated in enormous monetary loss for the public, or even the collapse of their national economy. Following the Great Crash of 1929, and some of the instances depicted from the 1980s onwards, the seismic effects were felt globally.

Today, we live in a highly sophisticated world of economic regulation, financial manipulation, and the extensive application of fiscal policy. Despite this, economic bubbles still seem to evolve from invisible beginnings, grow rapidly out of control, and then fragment into a melee of problems for modern-day society.

It is widely believed that the random forces of human nature are responsible, as they spiral out of control during periods of heady speculation, whilst a few share a different view. They feel that large economic bubbles are non-organic, as they are engineered by the financial system itself.

The latter is an interesting possibility - and one we shall certainly consider as we take a light-hearted journey through the subject matter of this book.