From Andrew Marr's A History Of The World (not the best book ever but well worth £4 if you can plow through it quickly enough so as not to get confused by the fine detail):
... or even in the widespread bankruptcy of Dutch speculators. The Estates General which ran the republic refused to take special measures, and passed the problem back to the civic authorities.
Many towns, in their turn, refused to process or hear any court actions involving the tulip trade, carrying on as if none of it had really happened and allowing the paper losses and the paper gains to wipe each other out.
If the dreams of sudden enrichment were snatched away, so were the nightmares of destitution.
This concept is of much wider application of course and I have alluded to it often enough.
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