Edward Chancellor is a financial historian, journalist and investment strategist. He is the author of Devil Take Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation. His latest book, The Price of Time, is published by Allen Lane in the United Kingdom and Atlantic Monthly Press in the United States.

Right: A harlequin and a fool lift the curtains exposing frenzied trading in Mississippi shares in the open-air stock market of Paris’s rue Quincampoix. This print appeared in a 1720 satire entitled The Great Mirror of Folly.