是日听力：boom and bust
The dotcom crash of the 90s.
The boom in the late 1990s when all those new Internet companies sprung up and then were sold for huge amounts of money, then the bust around 2000…2001 when many of those same Internet companies went out of business. Of course, booms aren’t always followed by busts. We’ve certainly seen times when local economies expanded rapidly for a while and then went back to a normal pace of growth. But, there’s a type of rapid expansion, what might be called the hysterical or irrational boom that pretty much always leads to a bust.
See, people often create and intensify a boom when they get carried away by some new industry that seems like it will make them lots of money fast. You’d think that by the 90s, people would have learned from the past. If they did, well, look at tulips.
Student: Tulips? You mean like the flower?
Professor: Exactly. For instance, do you have any idea where tulips are from? Originally I mean.
Student: Well, the Netherlands, right?
Professor: That’s what most people think, but no. They are not native to the Netherlands, or even Europe. Tulips actually hail from an area that Chinese call the Celestial Mountains in Central Asia, a very remote mountainous region. It was Turkish nomads who first discovered tulips and spread them slowly westward.
Now, around the 16th century, Europeans were traveling to Istanbul and Turkey as merchants and diplomats. And the Turks often gave the Europeans tulip bulbs as gifts which they would carry home with them. For the Europeans, tulips were totally unheard of, a great novelty. The first bulb to show up in the Netherlands, the merchant who received them roasted and ate them. He thought they were kind of onion.
It turns out that the Netherlands was an ideal country for growing tulips. It had the right kind of sandy soil for one thing, but also, it was a wealthy nation with a growing economy, willing to spend lots of money on new exotic things. Plus, the Dutch had a history of gardening. Wealthy people would compete, spending enormous amounts of money to buy the rarest flowers for their gardens.
Soon tulips were beginning to show up in different colors as growers tried to breed them specifically for colors which would make them even more valuable. But they were never completely sure what they would get. Some of the most priced tulips were white with purple streaks, or red with yellow streaks on the petals, even a dark purple tulip that was very much priced. What happened then was a craze for these specialized tulips. We called that craze “tulip mania”.
So, here we’ve got all the conditions for an irrational boom: a prospering economy, so more people had more disposable income—money to spend on luxuries, but they weren’t experienced at investing their new wealth. Then along comes a thrilling commodity. Sure the first specimens were just plain old tulips, but they could be bred into some extraordinary variations, like that dark purple tulip. And finally, you have an unregulated marketplace, no government constrains, where price could explode. And explode they did, starting in the 1630s.
There was always much more demand for tulips than supply. Tulips didn’t bloom frequently like roses. Tulips bloomed once in the early spring. And that was it for the year. Eventually, specially-bred multi-colored tulips became so valuable, well, according to records, one tulip bulb was worth 24 tons of wheat, or thousand pounds of cheese. One particular tulip bulb was sold and exchanged for a small sheep. In other words, tulips were literally worth their weight in gold.
As demand grew, people began selling promissory notes guaranteeing the future delivery of priced tulip bulbs. The buyers of these pieces of paper would resell the notes at marked-up prices. These promissory notes kept changing hands from buyer to buyer until the tulip was ready for delivery. But it was all pure speculation because as I said, there was no way to know if the bulb was really going to produce the variety, the color that was promised. But that didn’t matter to the owner of the note. The owner only cared about having that piece of paper so it could be traded later at a profit. And people were borrowing, mortgaging their homes in many cases to obtain those bits of paper because they were sure they’d find an easy way to make money.
So now, you’ve got all the ingredients for a huge bust. And bust it did, when one cold February morning in 1637, a group of bulb traders got together and discovered that suddenly there were no bidders. Nobody wanted to buy. Panic spread like wildfire and the tulip market collapsed totally.
boom and bust 繁荣与崩溃
关于economics的内容，我确实不是很擅长，所以遇到这篇算是增长见识。
上世纪九十年代晚期的时候，美国出现了 dotcom crash，所谓的互联网泡沫，在中国互联网飞速发展年代出生的这代人，可能有些人还没有意识到互联网的泡沫已经爆过一次。嘛，这也是前几个月从前辈那里得知的信息。自己身处行内，专业还算对口，毕业的时候连学化学专业从未学过编程的人也赶紧培训几个月来和广大科班抢饭碗，正所谓“站在风口上，猪都能飞上天”，近几年新闻问刚高考完的同学“你将来想读什么专业啊？”答曰“计算机专业啊”。问其为什么，一脸懵逼，问其了解否，随便拿来几个谁都会念的名词，总是让人感到一阵惶恐。前几年我还在读高一的时候，比我大一圈左右的亲戚还在和我说“念计算机和做设计没前途啊！读个研究生吧！”真想问问他的脸现在痛不痛。
回到正题，原文说“ people often create and intensify a boom when they get carried away by some new industry that seems like it will make them lots of money fast. ”然后问，到底人们有没有从以前的历史里吸取教训啊？然后引出了“tulip mania”郁金香狂热的例子。
维基上的背景描述是这么说的：
Tulip mania, tulipmania, or tulipomania (Dutch names include: tulpenmanie, tulpomanie, tulpenwoede, tulpengekte and bollengekte) was a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then dramatically collapsed in February 1637.
据说是“世界上第一次经济泡沫”，原文里面说，郁金香原产地不是荷兰也不是欧洲，而是位于亚洲中部中国的天山，而荷兰是种植郁金香的理想之地，这就如樱花一样，明明出产中国，却在日本开得贼漂亮。然后，土耳其的游牧民族把郁金香带了回去，他们在外交上喜欢给人两个 tulip bulbs作礼物，某天欧洲人收到了这个礼物，并且把它们当洋葱烤了来吃。之后，郁金香传到了荷兰。
当时荷兰人富裕了起来，有闲钱去买一下异国的新鲜事物，而且又有搞园艺的传统，于是他们开始沉迷起郁金香。为了有更高的价值，他们将郁金香进行各种杂交，为出现各种奇异的颜色，但这是不能确保的，就像谁都不知道自己的孩子将来会是长啥样一样。随着各种新鲜颜色的出现，“tulips were literally worth their weight in gold. ”郁金香像黄金一样有价值。
但由于郁金香一年才一季，人们开始觉得等不及了，于是出现了promissory note这种东西，也就是所谓的“期票”，预订购买下一季度特殊颜色的郁金香。前文说过，这些特殊颜色是并不能保证的，但是buyer才不管你那么多，反正我将这张纸卖给下一手攒差价而已，“ The buyers of these pieces of paper would resell the notes at marked-up prices. These promissory notes kept changing hands from buyer to buyer until the tulip was ready for delivery. ”
最后到了1637年的2月，郁金香交易者来到市场，纷纷你眼看我眼。“卖花啊？”“是呀，你也是？”“是呀”。Suddenly there were no bidders. Nobody wanted to buy. Panic spread like wildfire and the tulip market collapsed totally.
那到底人们有没有从前人的经验中吸取教训呢？