Seeing One’s Friends Getting Rich Is Upsetting

Abstract

The late 1990s exhibited a breathtaking confluence of economic change combining vast improvements in computer technology, steadily moderating inflation and rather sturdy economic growth. These themes formed the underlying currents of a massive equity boom that attracted many new investors in the 1990s. As the boom expanded, many of these new investors began to think they could get very rich, very quickly. The key was to move their savings from safe, low yielding investments into more speculative and arguably higher yielding equity securities. Financial conditions of the 1990s paralleled the “Roaring Twenties,” and in the giddy economic environment that resulted, America was divided into two broad classes: those who thought they were going to get rich quickly and those who couldn’t or didn’t. It was a period of financial exuberance that became the greatest equity boom in American financial history. Many of one’s neighbors seemed to be getting rich. It was quite disturbing if one was not getting rich alongside them.

Kindleberger’s exact quote is “There is nothing so disturbing to one’s wellbeing and judgment as to see a friend get rich.” (Kindleberger and Aliber 2005).