Liaquat Ahamed on the Railroad Bubble That Crashed the World | #642

What you'll learn

• 1 (01:43) **Introduction & Why 1873 Matters** - Meb introduces Liaquat Ahamed and frames the 1873 crisis as the world's first truly global financial crisis.
• 2 (03:16) **The Boom Before the Crash: Railroads and Global Capital** - Ahamed describes the massive economic boom that preceded 1873, driven by railroads and a flood of European capital.
• 3 (06:57) **The Mania: The "Founders Era" and the IPO Bubble** - Ahamed details the speculative mania that took hold, particularly in Germany, likening it to the dot-com bubble.
• 4 (12:12) **The Bimetallic World: Gold, Silver, and the Greenback** - Ahamed explains the pre-modern currency system based on gold and silver, and the unique position of the US after the Civil War.
• 5 (16:49) **The Three-Part Crash: Vienna, New York, and Emerging Markets** - Ahamed lays out the sequence of the 1873 crash, starting with the Vienna stock market, then US railroads, and finally sovereign defaults.
• 6 (21:12) **The Scramble for Gold and the 20-Year Deflation** - Ahamed explains how the crisis created a shortage of safe assets, leading to a brutal, two-decade-long deflation.
• 7 (23:04) **The Human Cost of Deflation: Debt, Farmers, and Political Stalemate** - Ahamed details how deflation split the US politically and created fertile ground for conspiracy theories.

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