Influence and Modern Responses
The book is still in print. Writers continue to discuss the influence of the book, particularly the section on financial bubbles. Financial writer Michael Lewis includes the financial mania chapters in his book The Real Price of Everything: Rediscovering the Six Classics of Economics as one of the six great works of economics, along with writings by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Thorstein Veblen, and John Maynard Keynes.
James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds takes a different view of crowd behavior, saying that under certain circumstances, crowds or groups may have better information and make better decisions than even the best informed individual. Robert Bartholomew and Hilary Evans wrote Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior to be like a modern extension of Mackay's work which is more sympathetic to the point of view of participants.
Financier Bernard Baruch credited the lessons he learned from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds with his decision to sell all his stock ahead of the financial crash of 1929.
Neil Gaiman borrows from the title in an issue of his popular comic series The Sandman, in a story featuring a writer whose novel is titled "...And the Madness of Crowds".
Author and executive coach Marshall Goldsmith discussed the book in depth in BusinessWeek, drawing extensive parallels between the financial bubbles Mackay wrote about and financial bubbles today. Other writers also frequently point to the book to explain recent financial bubbles.
Author and journalist Will Self writes a column for New Statesman, 'Madness of Crowds', which Self says takes it title from Mackay's book.
Forbes magazine compared Mackay's descriptions of financial bubbles to the Chinese stock bubble of 2007, claiming that the "emotional feedback loop" that drove the Chinese market was very similar to what Mackay described.
The book was the initial inspiration for Richard Condie's 1978 National Film Board of Canada animated short John Law and the Mississippi Bubble.
Read more about this topic: Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds
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