Economy of the Confederate States of America of London provided the U.K. Parliament with a powerful economic justification for the policy of neutrality. At the beginning of the war the Confederacy had some $47 million in bank deposits (compared to $189 million in Northern banks), and $27 million in specie (gold and silver coins) holdings (compared to $45 million worth in the northern states). Bad money drives out good, and supplies of gold and silver were hoarded, driven out of circulation by the rising flood of paper money. The first Confederate notes were issued in March 1861, and bore interest. They were soon followed by others, bearing
Economic bubble Ponzi schemes can lead to an increasingly fragile economy, and may also be part of what pushes asset prices artificially upward until the bubble pops. Simply put, economic bubbles often occur when too much money is chasing too few assets, causing both good assets and bad assets to appreciate excessively beyond their fundamentals to an unsustainable level. Once the bubble bursts, the fall in prices causes the collapse of unsustainable investment schemes (especially speculative and/or Ponzi investments, but not exclusively so), which leads to a crisis of consumer (and investor) confidence that may result in a financial panic and/or financial