Bubbles, Booms, and Busts

Donald Rapp was educated as a scientist, receiving his Ph. D. in 1960. He worked as a research scientist and became a professor at the University of Texas. Later, he spent 30 years as a senior technologist at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He published books on a wide variety of topics including quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, solar energy, climate change, ice ages and missions to Mars. After retiring around 2002, he developed an interest in financial bubbles and carried out extensive readings in this field including Kindleberger, Galbraith and many others. In 2006, he predicted the collapse of the housing bubble and wrote a book about financial bubbles with the housing bubbles as a center piece. By the time he was able to find a publisher (Springer) the housing bubble had already popped and he had to rewrite the book in past tense, rather than as a prediction. The first edition of this book was published in 2009. Since then, quite a number of new relevant publications have cast light on many aspects of financial bubbles. The second edition updates the first edition with new data and includes many new references and theories.