We only think there is. Morris is one of the more original thinkers around. Money, Greed and Risk is not in the same league as those books, but it has its share of rewards for the patient reader. An exuberant development period follows, as more and more firms pile in to take advantage of the sudden opportunity.
Exuberance quickly becomes gross excess, precipitating a crisis.
The subsequent crash burns off the excess, buyers and sellers adjust their expectations, regulators update their rules and alarm systems, and yesterday's brilliant innovation becomes just another of the industry's workaday departments. As Morris shows, this is the pattern that allowed for the rise of both the railroads and the steel industry back when J.P. Morgan and Jay Gould were the great financiers of the age. Gould, for instance, devised railroad debt instruments that were snapped up by European investors. Still and all, the railroads got built, and debt instruments became a common form of American finance. Not very, it turns out.