Making Sense of Financial Crises in the Netherlands: The Emotional Economy of Bubbles (1637-1987)

What the devil is he doing? This question might have occurred to people at the Amsterdam stock exchange in 1720, bumping into a New Year’s Gift pamphlet that presented a satyr as the “prince of stock jobbing” making love to goddess of money, Pecunia (Figure 10.1). Their courtship is explained: the Scottish “tail man”—obviously a reference to John Law, the presumed architect of the 1720 South Sea Bubble—has arrived from hell without money. With horse turds covered in rolled gold he has seduced nymph Pecunia, bewitching her calculating eyes. Through her love, a treasure of coins rains down upon the satyr. Sex between this investor prince and his money nymph is, financially, a very fertile affair. As the poem beneath the cartoon states, the affair attracts new “lievelingen” (“lovers,” as well as amateurs) to the stock market, who will probably soon fall into despair. The anonymous engraver and poet of this cartoon thus presented the speculation wave of the 1720s in terms of emotions: love, sexual desire, hope, and despair drive the stock market forward. While the cartoon characters perform these economic emotions, the emotional economy of the reader probably entailed balancing curiosity and joy (satire) with concern [...]