Wikipedia on David Ricardo:
He made the bulk of his fortune as a result of speculation on the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo. Prior to the battle, Ricardo posted an observer to convey early results of the outcome. He then deliberately created the mistaken impression the French had won by initially openly selling British securities. A market panic ensued. Following this panic he moved to buy British securities at a steep discount. The Sunday Times reported in Ricardo’s obituary, published on 14 September 1823, that during the Battle of Waterloo Ricardo "netted upwards of a million sterling", a huge sum at the time. He immediately retired, his position on the floor no longer tenable ...
In August 1818 he bought Lord Portarlington’s seat in Parliament for £4,000 ...
2 comments:
"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime." - French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)
Maybe he was talking about David Ricardo.
Syll quotes Schumpeter from History of Economic Analysis:
"Ricardo’s … interest was in the clear-cut result of direct, practical significance. In order to get this he cut that general system to pieces, bundled up as large parts of it as possible, and put them in cold storage — so that as many things as possible should be frozen and ‘given.’ He then piled one simplifying assumption upon another until, having really settled everything by theses assumptions, he was left with only a few aggregative variables between which, he set up simple one-way relations so that, in the end, the desire results emerged almost as tautologies … It is an excellent theory that can never be refuted and lacks nothing save sense. The habit of applying results of this character to the solution of practical problems we shall call the Ricardian Vice."
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