Bret Devereaux

I personally would read that book.

There is no book about it as far as I know, Patrick, and if there were I would buy it immediately, but it is the first well-recorded financial crisis in history, and is discussed in many sources and places, including by Tacitus and Suetonius. It involved falling real estate...

...prices, financial fraud, contagion from places as far as Alexandria, Antioch, and northern Gaul, bank runs, panicked crowds, and banking collapses (including that of the leading firm of Brothers Pettius, who I like to pretend were distant relatives), and it wasn't resolved...

huh, I really want a book on this too now. @BretDevereaux know anyone who's written on this?

The primary source material is Tac. Ann. 6.16-17 and Suet. Tib. 48.

Though unless there is attestation in other sources, I'm not sure it quite matches the grand description given above. The senate, in a bout of moralizing, attempted to crack down on usury, stipulating that money lent at interest should be recalled and invested into land.

Presumably the intent being to convert debt assets into land assets. Instead, land prices collapsed as leveraged aristocrats rushed to sell land to cover their debts (which of course made it impossible for them to cover their debts).

So essentially, a liquidity crisis created by the senate's moralizing. Tiberius eventually resolves the problem by dumping money into the banking system and offering interest-free loans on the security of land, essentially bailing out both the bankers and the landholders.