What would happen in Exchange Alley over the next year wasn’t simply the work of “a Trade founded in Fraud, born of Deceit, and nourished by Trick, Cheat, Wheedle, Forgeries, Falshoods.” The South Sea Bubble—the headlong rise and the sudden collapse of London’s nascent stock market—wasn’t the original sin of early modern capitalism—or rather, it was never only that.
