One of the books I enjoyed reading most this year was 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin, a New York Times commentator and broadcaster. It is the story of the extraordinary stock market crash of October that year, which foreshadowed – though was not entirely responsible for – the Great Depression. Only a few, very far-sighted investors saw it coming and made a fortune by betting on a collapse. Think of the dot.com crash of late 1999 – when technology valuations had run well ahead of reality – or the financial crash of 2008, when few spotted the hidden bombs in the financial markets based on highly leveraged bets on property. And more and more AI investment itself is also based on borrowings, rather than equity.

Source: The Irish Times December 27, 2025 23:18 UTC