Given that house prices are now falling across the board, it means that every valuation made last year was wrong.
In May 1720,William King, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, writing about the speculative mania for shares in a company called the South Sea Scheme that had overtaken the city, warned: ‘‘Most who go into this matter are well aware that it will not succeed but hope to sell before the price fall.”
Meanwhile, Richard Cantillon, the great Irish economist, warned about the South Sea speculation frenzy, pointing out that while prices can be kept up ‘‘for months, maybe years . . . a melancholy prospect awaits those who stay in the market last’’.
These warnings were triggered by the announcement in April 1720 that the South Sea Company, the entity issuing shares, would lend against it own stock. This would only mean that before the collapse, prices would rocket higher as people got into debt to the company to buy shares that the company had issued in the first place. >>>>
**Crashing property market begins to reveal its casualties **
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