The Speculator's Bootstrap and the Efficient Market

"Hieronymus Carl Friedrich von Münchhausen (1720-1797), also known as Baron von Munchausen, was a German nobleman who returned to his native Braunschweig after two decades of service in the Russian Imperial cavalry in the middle of the 18th century. He used to entertain dinner parties with deliberately caricatural tall stories of his adventures in far-flung lands. One of his exploits has become a much-used metaphor, now called the bootstrap theory, in the teaching of economics."