Inside the Greed Machine

A Journey Through History’s Most Spectacular Financial Bubbles

Financial bubbles don’t happen by accident.

They follow a script.

And we’re watching it unfold again.

From the Dutch Tulip Mania of 1637 to the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, cryptocurrency fever, and today’s AI gold rush—greed repeats the same patterns, dressed in new language and new technology.

What if you could recognise the warning signs before the next collapse?

Emmanuel Mark Byron learned the hard way. While working at leading investment banks across Europe, he lost a fortune in the dot-com bubble. Determined to understand why intelligent people keep falling for the same traps, he sharpened his thinking at Chicago Booth and spent the next two decades studying the mechanics behind every boom and bust.

This book is not a history lesson.

It’s a survival guide for investors and observers of markets.

Inside, you’ll uncover:

• Tulip Mania (1637): How speculation turns belief into delusion — and why nothing has changed
• The Roaring Twenties Crash: Margin, leverage, insider games, and the birth of regulation
• The Dot-Com Bubble: $5 trillion erased overnight — and a personal reckoning from the trading floor
• The 2008 Housing Crisis: Subprime lending, credit derivatives, and the illusion of “too big to fail”
• Crypto & NFTs: Digital gold, manufactured scarcity, and modern hype cycles
• The AI Bubble?: Are we watching the next mania inflate in real time?

Through vivid, thriller-style storytelling from trading floors and boardrooms, Inside the Greed Machine reveals:

• Why smart people suspend disbelief at market peaks
• How narratives overpower fundamentals
• The signals that appear before every collapse are always ignored

If you want to understand how bubbles are engineered—and how to avoid becoming collateral damage—this book will change how you see markets forever.

Perfect for readers of:

The Big Short, Flash Boys, Irrational Exuberance, and Fooled by Randomness