This is the first of two Tom Levenson Money for Nothing events this week. We are hosting a Zoom on Monday at 8 pm with our own Tom Levenson, so if you want a double dose of Tom – here’s your chance!
⭐️ First, an announcement: We have two audio versions of Tom’s book to give away tonight, and there are two more to give away at the Zoom. If you would like to be in tonight’s drawing for the audio book, please say so in the comments.⭐️
Winners are ljt and prostratedragon. Congratulations!
The Monday evening Zoom will begin with some questions from me (BG) to Tom, author to author, for about 20-minutes, and then we will open it up to questions from participants.
If you would like to attend the Zoom with Tom, send email to WaterGirl and she will reply with a password and a link to the Zoom.
Tonight’s Topic: Tom Levenson, Money for Nothing: Ask Me Anything
A brief note from Tom to get the conversation started:
Thanks to everyone for your interest in the book. It was born of my interest in how the Scientific Revolution (and changes in our knowledge of the material world since) gets experienced as part of everyday life. I came to this particular story—of the first great stock market boom, bust and crash in London in 1720—because of a stray fact I picked up on an earlier project, that Isaac Newton lost his shirt in the South Sea Bubble.
Poking at that anecdote led me to a much bigger story: how ideas about measurement and mathematical analysis developed during the scientific revolution shaped the beginnings of modern financial capitalism. That’s what the book is gnawing at, while, I hope, offering a fine fun ride through a tale of ambition, greed, and some very bad behavior.
And with that—have at it! I’ll be hanging out in the comments between grilling some short ribs for supper.
WaterGirl
For the audio book giveaway, we already have a list of randomly chosen comment numbers. If you want to be in the running for tonight’s audio book giveaway, be sure to indicate that in only ONE comment.
We will run down the numbers in the order on our list, until we have two matches between our list of numbers and comments where someone says they want to be in the running for the audio book.
Hint: Numbers 1-10 are not on the list.
WaterGirl
Speaking of authors, M4 was just telling me about this, and I thought it was worth sharing here since we are all interested in books, reading and culture. Click the links if you’re interested.
BGinCHI
Looking forward to tomorrow night as well, when we get to hear more from Tom about the book, his writing process, things that didn’t make it into the published project, and so on.
Join us via Zoom if you’re interested.
Baud
I haven’t read the book yet but I wanted to congratulate you again in your success.
DCA
Here is a link to some more technical (but very entertaining) papers on various bubbles:
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/bubbles.html
(conflict of interest: author was, long ago, a college roommate)
Yutsano
I haven’t read the book. But I do have some passing knowledge of the South Sea Bubble. I might keep up on that basis alone.
Zelma
I’m not sure I have any questions exactly; just a comment. I loved this book! It was so well written with so many wonderful characters and telling anecdotes. I do have a question. Maybe not for Tom but for other readers:
I taught British history for decades and actually specialized in 18th century England in grad school back in the dark ages. I was familiar with all of the major and many of the minor players. I wonder how people less familiar with the back story responded to the book.
That being said, were I still teaching British history, I would assign this book.
Tom Levenson
@DCA: I was/am indebted to your roommate for his meticulous analysis of Newton’s misadventures in the Bubble.
Tom Levenson
@Zelma: Thank you!
Please tell your friends still teaching 18th c. Britain that they might find something useful in it…if I might make an author’s plea.
MagdaInBlack
I’m reading Tom’s “Newton and the Counterfeiter” now, and the new one next.
Tom Levenson
@MagdaInBlack: They aren’t official prequel and sequel, but they do kind of work that way.
Hope you enjoy them both.
Zelma
@Tom Levenson:
I’m an avid romance reader and I posted about Money for Nothing on my favorite list when asked “What are you reading now?’ At least one member has put it on her reading list!
I’m afraid I am so removed from academia (13 years) that I am completely out of the loop.
Villago Delenda Est
What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
(and yes, by all means, enter me into the sweepstakes!)
BGinCHI
@Zelma: It’s after my period of expertise, but I found so many things still pretty recognizable about the London of the 1590s, which I know really well.
I found the whole story, and backstory, incredibly fascinating. I’ll say more about that tomorrow night.
MagdaInBlack
@Tom Levenson: I am enjoying this one, in part because I am interested in Newton the alchemist.
I was thinking it was a good prequel too.
Matt McIrvin
@DCA: Andrew Odlyzko? I know him for his long table of nontrivial zeroes of the Riemann zeta function (interesting to use in mathematical experiments).
SiubhanDuinne
I have the audiobook (as well as Kindle), so won’t enter my name in the drawing.
In fact, that leads me to my question for Tom. In August, when the book first came out, I asked a question about the cover art and your role in selecting the design. My question tonight is similar: what, if any, input did you have in determining who would read the audio version of Money for Nothing? Did you (or your publisher) consider reading it yourself? And are you pleased with the final product as recorded?
ETA: I, too, am finding it both readable and fascinating.
Zelma
I imagine that every reader will bring their own interests to reading this (or any book). What struck me most forcibly was putting the whole issue of putting the changing financial world into the context of the changing scientific world view.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est: Laden Swallows is my new band name.
Aleta
@WaterGirl: Please enter me in the drawing. Thanks.
DRAWING.
Zelma
But I imagine that people who are more interested in the financial/economic world would be more interested in “lessons” to be taught. In this vein, I hadn’t realized that part of the reason for the high prices of South Sea stock had to do with money from abroad coming into the market. And they had to ship specie across the channel to get in on the action! It’s so much easier now when all it takes is hitting send on the computer.
Catherine D.
Serendipity! I just started reading the book this weekend. A long time ago, I worked in the commodities/options business for a jackass who made illegal trades with the Hunt brothers. So I’ve known of the tulip craze and the South Sea Bubble, but I didn’t expect Isaac Newton to pop up.
Pete Downunder
Tom – I am about 90% through Money for Nothing and it is really great. I really had no background in English history of the period and while familiar generally with Newton’s work and bio was unaware of his misadventures with the South Sea bubble.
I was just reading today about a newish stock market scam where short sellers would publish or cause to be published all kinds of false claims about a company – that its claims of revenue were fraudulent etc – then when the price dropped profit from their short sales. It appears that the Aussie ASIC (our version of the US SEC) is completely powerless to stop it. ASIC is pretty toothless in the best of times as our current right wing government would never give it the power to strongly regulate its corporate benefactors.
BGinCHI
We probably won’t get to this tomorrow, as it’s kind of in the weeds, but I’m curious about the relationship between education, educational institutions, and the nascent markets (and their actors).
Clearly, Newton wasn’t up to much at Cambridge, or getting much of anywhere. At least according to how that’s portrayed early in the book. It’s when he comes to London and gets his position at the mint that things take off. This real-world position and his influence gained by having it is a far cry from what even a Cambridge don can do.
We’d expect important Oxford/Cambridge profs to have more influence these days, I think.
Were the men who worked in the Change Alley markets formally educated? The Inns of Court get a brief mention, but I was wondering whether several of these fellows either washed out, or quit, or left with the training necessary to go into that line of work rather than, say, the law, or accountancy.
Was hoping to hear more about these relationships.
Tom Levenson
@Zelma: ;-)
Tom Levenson
@SiubhanDuinne: I had exactly no say in the selection of the reader. I don’t have any real interest in reading it myself. I have a great face for radio, and a decent untrained narrator’s voice, but professionals are better, and I don’t think and listener is picking up the book to hear my dulcet tones.
As far as the read? It’s clear, pleasant, and while I’d run it at 110% speed or so, I think it’s nicely done.
Tom Levenson
@Pete Downunder: Not a new scam, alas. But yeah–the stock trade has never been kind to the unwary.
WaterGirl
@Tom Levenson: I think you have a lovely voice!
prostratedragon
Please enter me in the drawing (though I’m also going to get a readable). And thanks for the list of papers, DCA. Bubbles are indeed fascinating. I’m running through Odlyzko’s Newton-Dafoe-Dynamics article now, which considers social networks as among the drivers of bubbles. In my murky past is work on a project that involved proxies for large versus small networks in metro housing markets. (This was before the securitized mortgage industry and the internet basically made everywhere a potential seedbed for bubbles.)
DRAWING.
We have our first winner! one more winner to go. no one else has matched our numbers.
Zelma
Tom, why do you think the Brits and the French responded so differently to their simultaneous financial crises? I mean, the French went back to the old ways that had caused the problems to begin with while the English “learned” how to do things differently? I know this is a complex question and there is no single, easy answer. (There never is.)
Sure Lurkalot
I thoroughly enjoyed Money for Nothing and highly recommend it! Hope to pop in tomorrow night….
raven
Warnock Loeffler coming right up.
BGinCHI
@Zelma: Good question.
wmd
Are you familiar with Neal Stephenson’s Baroque cycle – it’s fiction, but Newton’s problems come up in it.
Hard money people (read as gold bugs) like to point to bubbles like this as a reason credit is bad.
Tom Levenson
@BGinCHI: I don’t know enough to answer this question with any authority, but I think there were some distinctions. By rule, there were 100 licensed brokers, ten of whom could be Jews. Those folks were, I think, of a generally more educated/respectable sort than those disdained as mere jobbers. More generally, ‘Change Alley and its coffee houses (like coffee houses everywhere, then) were one of the places where class distinctions and barriers broke down to a considerable degree. At the same time, the City of London had its own structure, and people like John Blunt could become a member of its upper ranks by apprenticing and then rising in a guild, a process that was distinct from either the Inns or the universities.
The universities themselves were very different from the role they would play fairly soon after this period, and even more so from what they are now, as you know. They trained the clergy, and gentlemen’s sons, and relatively few, like Newton, who would become the next generation of intellectuals. There was nothing of professional education, and when Newton himself was an undergraduate (1661-65, the curriculum was still a hybrid of old-fashioned learning and an growing proportion of the newer natural philosophy.
That wander around the matter sufficiently?
Uncle Omar
Please put me down as a book wanter. I’ve read everything I have in the house, twice, and need a new obsession. I’ve beaten Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages to death and have put a serious hurt on Plantagenet England. Anything new would be most welcome and this sounds like it will send me off on a new tangent.
DRAWING.
Barbara
When I read about using lotteries and sweepstakes to raise funds, I thought about our own way of raising money through games. I gather this is a very different animal, but I didn’t really understand how those things were supposed to work. Was there an actual element of chance involved?
Tom Levenson
@Zelma: Long and complicated question.
I don’t have a great answer, in part because I really am not an expert in 18th c. France. (I’m not an expert in anything, really, but I know a lot more about Britain than the folks across the water.)
One big difference between the two nations that I do think had an effect, though, was where the power of the purse lay. In Britain, after a centuries long struggle, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 pretty much settled that: Parliament gained the dominant role in fiscal matters. That was what enabled England and then Britain to create a genuinely national debt, and it further allowed the British financial authorities to persuade financial markets that they were trustworthy borrowers; all parties knew that if needed, Parliament could use its power to raise revenue.
France was different. The state’s purse was (notionally) the monarch’s purse, and though it’s possible to imagine ways the French fiscal state could reformed itself, there was a lot of both tradition and questions of power in the land that pushed against such restructuring. And the French experience of the Mississippi disaster was different from Britain’s as well–it was more total, involved much more the economy, and was engineered by a foreigner, using strange and to many incomprehensible reasoning. So there may have been an emotional tug to resume tried-and-true familiar approaches as well.
BGinCHI
@Tom Levenson: Yes, thanks.
This begins to unravel what’s already an important subtext in the book: class.
The English class system is famously very, very stratified, and its conventions can often be hard to disentangle when we’re doing fine-grained historical readings of texts, sifting through events, etc. Your answer adds some detail to how rich the stew must have been in those coffee houses. You do a great job with this in the book, though I’m guessing there are tons of anecdotes about things going on there, strange characters, even murders and political actions.
One prominent antagonism in the late 16th-early 17th C. in London was the rivalry between apprentices (who beat immigrants, rioted over conditions, and many other acts that disturbed the peace) and the servant class. I’d love to know how extensive the coffee house and trading population was beyond the obvious (merchant class). I’m also curious what Inns of Court students mixed it up there, since they were very active theater-goers. A few prominent playwrights were former Inns of Court students who dropped out, much to their parents’ chagrin.
Above all, I just love the street culture of London in all its messiness.
Tom Levenson
@wmd: Yes. I really enjoyed that body of work, though I put off reading it until I finished my Newton and the Counterfeiter, because, as I told Neil, I did not want his Newton yammering in my ear as I was trying to write mine.
And yeah, gold bugs gotta bug. Newton was right: credit is vital in the affairs of state and the economic life of a nation.
Yutsano
@raven:
C-Span link if anyone wants it.
EDIT: don’t want to take over the thread, but Warnock sounds good. Loeffler is nothing but attack lines and sound bites. She has said almost exactly the exact thing twice now.
Zelma
@Tom Levenson:
I would be surprised if many of those who trafficked in shares on the ‘Change were university educated. Oxford and Cambridge by this period were entering into a period of relative intellectual decline. Like you said, they were to produce clergymen and give an opportunity for the sons of gentlemen to receive a genteel patina of education. You pointed out that Newton was not very stimulated by his colleagues at Cambridge; in fact, I think you said he was bored. London was where the intellectual actions was. Though most of the men who were intellectually inclined had a university “education,” few would have attributed their knowledge to that experience.
Yarrow
@Tom Levenson: I see from an excerpt that you begin with Newton’s time in isolation during the Great Plague. How do you think the Plague influenced the subjects you cover in the book? Just kind of curious because we’re going through a similar plague experience and I’m wondering how things will look when we finally come out of it.
planetjanet
I am eager to read this. Yes, please put me in the drawing for an audiobook. Thanks.
DRAWING.
Tom Levenson
@Barbara: Yes. The lottery-annuities or the lottery-bonds were hybrids. They were tickets for a drawing, which was random. Your number got pulled, you’d get a cash prize, sometimes substantial. Once the drawing was complete, your ticket became an interest-bearing security. You’d get a payment for some term of years. That asset could be sold, and was priced simply as any other bond or annuity, at some present-value-calculated rate for the remaining income stream of however many years were left on the instrument.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tom Levenson:
I’ve seen your face and heard your voice, and they’re both far superior to what you describe! But I’m glad you’re happy with the narrator. I seem, for some reason, to want to know more about these “process” questions, so thank you for indulging me.
Tom Levenson
@BGinCHI: It’s a great area, but I’m much more of a reader in that material than a writer of it.
Tom Levenson
@Zelma: Exactly. But there were other sources of expertise and class-ranking available to city-men. I haven’t gone far enough into reading up on the guild-structure at this moment, but some of the London Companies were very important to the creation of the monied-traders.
dexwood
Toss my name into the audio book contest. If I don’t win, I’ll happily buy a copy. Gonna go back to reading along and learning. Thanks all.
DRAWING.
Zelma
@Barbara:
You know, I was wondering about how lotteries worked in the 18th century too. Was it like today, where the winner could (or had to) take the winnings essentially as an annuity? And how many winners were there? And how often were the lotteries held? Clearly not once a week like these days!
ljt
Looking forward to reading/listening soon. Please add me to the drawing!
DRAWING.
Aleta
A question (not about your book, which I look forward to). But in the same time period (starting around 1713) and about a Newton story. If this doesn’t interest you, it’s OK to ignore the question … And please excuse me if I don’t have the facts right…
I’m wondering if you know whether something that Neil Stephenson wrote in Quicksilver is true? IiIRC, NS describes Newton’s alchemy obsession. He was in charge of the mint and used his alchemy skills to make the metals sound, based on composition and purity . In the book Newton is obsessed with finding heavy gold — they measured gold’s purity by its weight (density as a measure of its purity). In the fictional story a cache of heavier gold had appeared somewhere. Did that really happen, or was it a literary device, or a rumor at the time, or ? ??
Thanks.
tybee
@WaterGirl:
i read much faster than i listen but i’ll stick my nym in the hat.
DRAWING.
WaterGirl
Please check my work, guys. If you asked to be entered for the book drawing and you do not see this at the bottom of your comment, please draw it to my attention:
DRAWING
BGinCHI
@WaterGirl: In the spirit of Tom’s book, please also send us your SS# and credit card info. Don’t forget that 3-digit pin!
wmd
@Tom Levenson: Gold bugs introduced me to Charles Mackey’s
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds. It strikes me as a nice 19th century take on various manias prior to its publication. I’ve not read your books, will need to get them on my list, it’s an interesting subject.
Tom Levenson
@Yarrow: By the 1720s the plague was really not a present memory. Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year was published just a year after the Bubble, but it was a kind of morality-novel, and in some part can be read as an allegory of the derangement of society just passed in that Bubble year.
And more broadly, I think it’s hard to draw real parallels from that experience to ours. The plague was understood within a framework of belief and experience that is vastly unlike what we know now, and how we respond to such matters today. There are likely resonances, but not a direct link to London 1665.
WaterGirl
@BGinCHI: No problem! I’ll add it to the footer. :-)
Tom Levenson
@Aleta: A literary device.
Newton was absolutely an alchemist, the greatest, and perhaps the only quantitative one.
And yes, there’s plausible speculation that his chymical skills applied directly to his mint work: he did an time-and-motion analysis of coining processes early on in his time there, and it is clear that this seemingly unworldly Cambridge don had real chops in understanding about the melting and processing of metal–and he was an excellent assayer and quality-control person. His work passed the Trial of the Pyx every time, to the consternation of some of his rivals.
But no–he was not in pursuit of heavy gold, and he seems to have almost entirely ceased alchemical research after 1693, three years before he got to the mint.
Tom Levenson
@wmd: Mackey is great.
sab
@Zelma: I majored in British history and I agree with you aboit this book. I thought I knew a lot about eighteenth century Britain but I have learned so much.
grandmaBear
Just wanted to pop in to say I’m a few chapters into the book and am really enjoying it. Very well written – you have an engaging style. Thanks for being here.
Tom Levenson
@grandmaBear: @sab:Thanks to you both, and to everyone who has had such kind words to say about the book.
Omnes Omnibus
I am only as far as the Hollow Sword Company in the book, so I know I have all the fun to come.
Aleta
@Tom Levenson: Thanks!
“he did an time-and-motion analysis of coining processes early on in his time there” That’s interesting.
My gr gr+ grandfather was named Isaac Newton. I was excited about this, but then read that the famous Newton probably had no children. And that it was a very popular name to bestow on sons at that time.
Barbara
@Omnes Omnibus: For me personally, the most interesting reading comes after the fall, so to speak, about how GB allocated losses among those who had been hoodwinked, and how it dealt with the perpetrators of bribes and other bad acts. It’s not giving away too much to say that the real kicker is that one impact of the bubble — destructive as it was to individuals — was to reduce the nation’s own financial difficulties, which probably makes it very different from modern day crashes, which tend to hurt the nation state as well as individuals. However, that fact seems to have been one of the things that galvanized Parliament in not being too munificent to the losers.
Tom Levenson
@Aleta: No kids for my man Izzie, but a fair number of half-nieces and nephews by the children of his mother’s second marriage.
So possibly a distant connection.
Zelma
@Tom Levenson:
I’d really like to know more about his niece (Mary Barton?) who became the Montague’s mistress! Now there’s an unlikely career path for a respectable lady.
Joy in FL
I just ordered my physical copy of Money for Nothing. I wish I had done it sooner so I could have read it before the Zoom tomorrow. Neverthless, I will enjoy the Zoom and then the book. A couple weeks ago, I read the Kindle sample and just wanted to keep reading. I should have bought the book then : )
I enjoyed reading all the questions and answers and comments tonight. Thanks for this post.
WaterGirl
Has everyone who wants to attend the Tom Levenson zoom sent me email?
prostratedragon
A little period music from a chess master of the day:
WaterGirl
I’ll check back in the morning for more folks who want to be in the drawing.
Yarrow
@Tom Levenson: Thanks, Tom. I wasn’t really thinking of real parallels but maybe broad themes that might be more obvious in retrospect. Appreciate your insight and your response.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
Thanks Tom. I really enjoyed the book when I read it a few moths ago and I learned a lot! I’m rereading it now and enjoying it again. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s Zoom gathering.
CaseyL
I’ve read Money for Nothing and loved it. So far, everything of Tom’s that I’ve read has been a delight, an adventure, and a wonderful addition to the encyclopedia living in my brain.
One thing that occurred to me, particularly when thinking about the effect of Newton’s Principia on mainstream society, how reading it became a fad in some circles. When a new perspective, or new way of thinking, becomes accessible and popular, people generally like to re-interpret everything they knew up until then using the new perspective. The new thinking finds its way into some very unexpected places.
Examples: Discovering how toxic lead is, and how the Romans used lead in everything from dishware to cosmetics, led people to completely re-evaluate how they interpreted Rome’s decline. Freud’s “popularization” of psychoanalysis led to a frenzy of working his concepts into literature, dramatic theatre, and historical research. Atomic bombs and their radioactive wake made mutations a popular plot device in film, TV, and comic books.
Newton providing a workable mechanical explanation for life, the universe, and everything therefore inevitably led to people believing you could quantify just about anything – including economics, trade, and currency values. Obviously, you can… but people (including Newton) also thought being able to analyze and quantify something meant you could also control it. Which turned out to be… not true.
BGinCHI
@CaseyL: Terrific points.
This got me thinking about how the Church of England reacted (if at all) to this.
Galileo had, you know, a few issues with Rome, but did Newton face any religious opposition?
LaméDuck
Please add me to the drawing! Thx!!
DRAWING.
Zelma
@BGinCHI:
I don’t think the leadership of the C of E was much interested in scientific theories. Of course, Newton had some rather heterodox ideas but he never published them. It took a while for the implications of Newtonianism to penetrate beyond the educated elite. The church leadership was too much taken up with political issues to pay much attention. I certainly never heard of any organized effort to attack the Principia. But clearly, Tom would have a better take on this than me.
WaterGirl
@prostratedragon: You have won the first copy of the audio book.
No one else has matched one of our numbers.
Miss Bianca
@MagdaInBlack:
FINALLY my library district has got this one in! I finished Newton and the Counterfeiter a few weeks back and have been waiting for this one. I would buy it for myself, but my cash flow is so straitened right now that I just can’t. Thank goodness for libraries!
Jon
Please sign me up for the Tom Levenson Zoom meeting.
Jon
WaterGirl
@Jon: I am so sorry that I didn’t see this in time!
A commenter’s first comment goes in moderation until it is manually approved. So sorry, and welcome to commenting!
WaterGirl
@ljt: We have our second winner. Congratulations!