Scorned hazards of urban land markets : the carnival of excess in late-nineteenth century Melbourne

Abstract

This paper proposes, however, that an insufficient understanding of land as an investment and the scope of speculation in urban and suburban property helped push Melbourne into a crisis. Swift government action might have had little effect, because die want of confidence in Victorian banking was more than psychologically based.7 Financial institutions had entangled diemselves in a web of loans that tied them to the building cycle; depositors who widtdrew reacted rationally to revelations that many financial institutions—not merely a corrupt few—had heaps of over-valued securities.