England: South Sea Bubble - The Sharp Mind of John Blunt - Extra History - Part 1
Extra History6 HN recommenders · 2018–2025
3.5M views · explainer · evergreen · Uploaded 2015-02-28
The first part of Extra History's animated miniseries on the South Sea Bubble. It explains how England's government debt led Robert Harley to turn to financier John Blunt, whose schemes began inflating artificial demand for shares.
Recommended as an accessible, easily digestible introduction to the South Sea Bubble whenever financial manias, ICOs or overvalued companies come up.
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7 comments from Hacker News
For those who want an accessible introduction to the South Sea Bubble, Extra History has a video series on the causes and aftermath: [VIDEO]
I think you'd like this overview of England's South Sea Company and how John Blunt used all kinds of now illegal monetary fraud to become England's largest company, worth more than their GDP: [VIDEO]
It is always amazing to me that humans are just so predictably greedy . You'd have thought that we'd have learned any damned thing from history. For other readers with a bit of free time this Friday afternoon, XtraHistory has a great series on the 'South Sea Company' Bubble and the always interesting First British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole: [VIDEO]
Also mentioned: The south sea company was basically a huge banking bubble scam. It is quite an interesting tale: [VIDEO]
If you liked this story, I also highly recommend the YouTube Extra History miniseries on the South Sea Bubble, which is a very similar contemporary scheme in the U.K. [VIDEO]
More about the whole thing: England: South Sea Bubble - The Sharp Mind of John Blunt - Extra History - Part 1 [VIDEO]
I'll throw the British South Sea Trading Company into the ring for that title of most overvalued company ever. It had the king himself on the board. The company value represented a decent fraction of the national gdp at the time. All without actually never producing anything of actual value. It was just bribes and speculation all the way through. It's wild. [LINK] Extra History did a more easily digestible series, which was how I learned about it in the first place. [VIDEO]