★ FINANCE

Finance

Money, markets, and the strange things people have agreed to treat as valuable.

Finance
Six Disasters of the Stock Market
March 31, 2026
Tulip bulbs to Long-Term Capital. The specific mechanisms vary. The shape is always the same.
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Finance
Tulip Mania: Smaller, Stranger, and More Human Than the Legend
March 28, 2026
The real story of Dutch tulip mania of 1636–37: the Semper Augustus bulb, futures trading in Haarlem taverns, and what archival work revealed about the actual scale of the bubble.
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Finance
Seven Unusual Currencies That Once Bought Real Things
February 28, 2026
Seven genuinely-used historical currencies: Yap stone money, Siberian tea bricks, cowrie shells, Roman salt, squirrel pelts, Chinese knife money, and colonial tobacco notes.
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