PART 1 Devil Take The Hindmost A History of Financial Speculation Edward Chancellor full audiobook

Devil Take the Hindmost A History of Financial Speculation by Edward Chancellor 1999

And when dreams deceive our wandering eyes in the heavy slumber
of night, and under the spade the earth yields gold to the light of
day: our greedy hands finger the spoil and snatch at the treasure,
sweat too runs down our face, and a deep fear grips our heart that
maybe someone will shake out our laden bosom, where he knows the
gold is hid: soon, when these pleasures flee from the brain
they mocked, and the true shape of things comes back, our mind
is eager for what is lost, and moves with all its force among
the shadows of the past ...
Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter,
circa A.D. 50

The propensity to barter and exchange is an innate human characteristic. An inclination to divine the future is another deeply ingrained trait. Together they comprise the act of financial speculation. "All life is speculation," declared the celebrated nineteenth-century American trader James R. Keene, "the spirit of speculation is born with men." For the earliest known historical cases of speculation we must turn to ancient Rome during the Republic of the second century B.C. By this date, the Roman financial system had developed many of the characteristics of modern capitalism: markets flourished because Roman law allowed the free transfer of property, money was lent out at interest, money changers dealt in foreign currencies, and payments across the Roman territories could be made by bankers' draft. Capital concentrated in Rome, as it later did in Amsterdam, London, and New York. The idea of credit had also developed, along with a primitive form of insurance for ships and other forms of property. The people of Rome exhibited a passion for the accumulation of wealth, matched by an extravagance in its display and consumption. Gaming was common.

In Latin, the word speculator describes a sentry whose job it was to "look out" (speculare) for trouble. The financial speculator in ancient Rome, however, was called quaestor, which means a seeker. Collectively, speculators were sometimes referred to as Graeci or Greeks. Their meeting place was the Forum, near the Temple of Castor, where "crowds of men bought and sold shares and bonds of tax-farming companies, various goods for cash and on credit, farms and estates in Italy and in the provinces, houses and shops in Rome and elsewhere, ships and storehouses, slaves and cattle." The Roman comic playwright Plautus describes the Forum as peopled with whores, shopkeepers, moneylenders, and wealthy men. He identifies specifically two unsavoury groups; the first lot he describes as "mere puffers" and the second as "impudent, talkative, and malevolent fellows, who boldly, without reason, utter calumnies about one another." In this description, we find the originals of the bulls and bears of later stock markets.