The Bubble That Broke Kuwait

Enlarge this image toggle caption Langevin Jacques/Sygma via Getty Images Langevin Jacques/Sygma via Getty Images

In the early 1980s, Kuwait's unofficial stock market — run out of a parking garage on the site of an old camel market — was the third largest in the world, second only to the U.S. and Japan. But then, in an instant, it all came crashing down, plunging Kuwait into a brutal recession that would last for nearly a decade. How is it that a simple financial innovation could create such vast wealth and such devastating chaos? And what can it teach us about the fundamental forces at the heart of modern capitalism?

Today on The Indicator: the story of the Souk al-Manakh and one of the greatest stock bubbles of all time.

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