What are the potential benefits of ‘bubbles’ to society? Every now and then a new technology comes along that changes everything – electricity, computers, potentially AI. In mid-19th-century America, that technology was the steam locomotive. While it drove the nation’s industrialisation during the Gilded Age, it also caused one of the biggest financial crises in American history.
FT Alphaville editor Robin Wigglesworth tells his co-host, FT columnist Gillian Tett, the story of the great railway bubble that ended in the Panic of 1873 and the lessons for the investors gambling on today’s AI boom.
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