8 ms·

Banking-Crisis Interventions, 1257-2019 [pdf]

149 points by monort 5y ago

aazaa 5y ago
From the conclusion: > In the historical record, crises are like fires and the government interventions in those crises are firefighting. ... There's a brilliant quote from James Grant to the effect that the US Federal Reserve acts as both firefighter and arsonist: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-08-27/fed-s-functional-mandate-is-arsonist-and-fireman-grant https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-08-27/fed-s-funct... It's not clear that the paper even considers this perspective. Instead it seems to take the position that banking crises naturally evolve, rather than get spawned by policy missteps to correct the previous crisis.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  To extend the analogy, wildfires also evolve naturally but can be exacerbated by firefighting policy: extinguishing small fires too much, allowing an accumulation of flammable materials which eventually lead to a much bigger fire.
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    Fires evolve according to fuel availability, wind, water and so on. They aren't active, intelligent agents commanding vast resources in a constant search for newer and better ways to socialize the losses and privatize the gains. Have you ever known a fire to intentionally cultivate moral hazard?
    - HPsquared 5y ago
      It's not just fire, there is an organic component of my analogy: the ever-growing and adaptive forest, which will take any opportunity it can to accumulate biomass.
  - Aunche 5y ago
    The difference is that fires predictable, and you can have controlled wildfires. There's no such thing as a controlled financial collapse. I agree that the fed intervened too heavily during the pandemic, but I think that 2008 struck the correct balance of intervention. Several financial institutions went bankrupt and most others lost over 90% of their market cap.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  The James Grant that, in 2010, was one of the co-signers of the Open Letter to Bernanke: > We believe the Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase plan (so-called "quantitative easing") should be reconsidered and discontinued. We do not believe such a plan is necessary or advisable under current circumstances. The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed's objective of promoting employment. * https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.html https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.ht... The same James Grant that, in 2011, thought we should go back to the gold standard to head off the looming debt catastrophe? > How does America, looking up from the bottom of a $14.3 trillion sinkhole, claw its way out of debt? For starters, says perennial Wall Street bear James Grant, go back to the gold standard. > In an interview with The Fiscal Times, the editor of investment newsletter Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, says: “No other reform would accomplish so much to hasten the return both of growth and fiscal balance. The reserve currency franchise, which America uniquely possesses, is a kind of global credit card on which the outstanding balance never seems to come due and payable. This country needs a debit card--and the gold standard is that debit card.” * https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/06/28/A-Solid-Gold-Fix-for-the-National-Debt https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/06/28/A-Solid-G...
  - hogFeast 5y ago
    The same James Grant that predicted the junk bond meltdown, the same James Grant that predicted the dot-com bust, the same James Grant that predicted the housing crash, the same James Grant that predicted the meltdown in Chinese resi...if you have experience in markets, you will learn two things: everyone makes wrong predictions, and you can be wrong now/right later. Also, you appear (for some reason, have you ever read Grant's?) not to mention any of the numerous calls on individual stocks they have got right. The macro is only part of what they do. When you are read by pretty much every hedge fund manager in the world, when they will pay $2.5k to come to your conference, and $1.3k/year for a subscription...you are doing something right (also, as someone who studied economic history, his book are first-rate...compare his books to Philip Coggan, a columnist at the Economist who has written books on economic history, it is night and day...Grant's books are academic tier quality, people who work in finance today still read books he wrote three decades ago).
- imtringued 5y ago
  The fact that your money loses value is an inherently good thing. Think about having a coupon for a banana. The store raises the value of the coupon above the cost of the banana because it knows that it doesn't sell all bananas in the store. It has to throw some of them out. If the coupon lost value over time according to the rate that bananas spoil then the value of the coupon would be the same as the cost of the banana. Just think about how absurd it is that the banana is less valuable than the coupon that gets you a banana. At the end of the day all you get is a banana either way. It's the same with money and labor. If money is more valuable than labor then people hoard it.
cs702 5y ago
The authors compiled data for 1886 interventions in 20 categories across 138 countries going back to the 13th century. Fabulous work. Looking forward to reading it. In the meantime, please do yourself a favor and take a look at Figure 6 on page 31, which shows that the number of interventions to rescue financial institutions around the world has been increasing consistently since the 1600's. As the authors put it in their abstract, "intervention frequencies and sizes suggest that the crisis problem in the financial sector has indeed reached an apex during the post-Bretton Woods era – but that such trends are part of a more deeply entrenched development that saw global intervention frequencies and sizes gradually rise since at least the late 17th century." And it's not only the frequencies and sizes of interventions that have increased, but also their scope. From the abstract: "The data shows a gradual shift over the past centuries from the traditional interventions of a lender-of-last-resort, suspensions of convertibility, and bank holidays, towards a much more prominent role for capital injections and sweeping guarantees of bank liabilities." In short, over the course of at least five centuries, the financial system has grown more and more dependent on governmental support.
- dannyw 5y ago
  My interpretation is that society has been increasingly dependent on the financial system. Who keeps cash anymore? It's almost illegal on many jurisdictions. It's no longer something you can opt out of, especially since the covid pandemic.
  - soperj 5y ago
    It wouldn't be such a long build up if that were the case.
  - bserge 5y ago
    So fucking nationalize them when they fail. Resell them after instating jail time for all the chief executive gamblers. Would it really be worse than bailing them out with public money?
- waihtis 5y ago
  > In short, over the course of at least five centuries, the financial system has grown more and more dependent on governmental support. More like: over the course of the last five centuries, financiers have grown more and more adept in outsourcing their losses to the government.
throw0101a 5y ago
One of the co-authors, Paul Schmelzing, published a paper on how interest rates have been on a general downward trend for a few centuries: * https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2020/eight-centuries-of-global-real-interest-rates-r-g-and-the-suprasecular-decline-1311-2018 https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2020/eight-cen... Interviewed recently on the Finance & History podcast: * https://twitter.com/FinanceHistory1/status/1435170755432624130 https://twitter.com/FinanceHistory1/status/14351707554326241... * https://anchor.fm/carmen-hofmann/episodes/Interest-Rates-e16rp9u https://anchor.fm/carmen-hofmann/episodes/Interest-Rates-e16... His hypothesis (23m) is that capital stock is fairly long lasting, so except for (mostly) wars and revolutions (and plagues), there isn't much demand: people want to rebuild after disasters, and so demand for capital goes up. When things are quiet then there's more just sloshing around with not much to do. The oil shock of 1970s, which caused the most recent spike in the last 40 years (which is tapering), was a fairly unique event for rates.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  That interest rates were on downward trend for centuries has already been observed by Adam Smith in “Wealth of Nations” in 1776. He claimed that governments can borrow at 2%, and private borrowers of good repute at 2.5%. Considering that inflation at the time was almost 0%, these were basically real rates, and would today correspond to nominal rates of 4-4.5%. Point here is that in England, rates were already very very low in 18th century.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  I would think there has to also be some trend whereby lending to untrusted third parties has actually become cheaper and less risky. As in, creditors have recourse to a court system and police they don't have to personally fund, rather than paying enforcers to find people and break knees. And wages these days are far more stable than hundreds of years ago, so whoever you loaned money to is a lot less likely to suffer drastic life-changing events that leave them unable to pay in a way you didn't anticipate. We also have better data and better predictive models. Insurance is more widespread. Some insurance is directly provided by the government with nearly zero chance of not paying. All of these factors should be expected to make it cheaper to borrow money.
specialist 5y ago
Graeber's book Debt: The First 5000 Years documents that cycles of debt crisis and subsequent forgiveness is historically normal. And probably necessary. I mean, think about it: What other remedies do we have to winner-takes-all? Progressive taxation? Government largess? Made me rethink all the bailouts, etc. Especially with the renewed scholarship on Keynesian 2.0 (MMT). I'd probably be ok with bailouts, jubilees if they were more fair, more bottom up. Financiers gobbling up all the cheddar, abandoning all their victim's, really pisses me off. Insult to injury is lack of consequences, acting aggrieved when their malfeasance is examined. Just one example being Jamie Dimon clutching his pearls when Obama Admin merely suggesting the optics of huge bonuses for execs during a meltdown was a bad look.
- faustlast 5y ago
  I think the course "economics of money and banking" might be of your interest. Really good insights there.
  - specialist 5y ago
    Looks fantastic. Thanks. https://www.coursera.org/learn/money-banking https://www.coursera.org/learn/money-banking https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Banking-Financial-Markets-Business/dp/0134734203 https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Banking-Financial-Markets-B...
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  "I'd probably be ok with bailouts, jubilees if they were more fair, more bottom up..." I think it is not so much the bailout that bothers me, as the "ok, crisis over, back to normal" that happens immediately afterwards. If it was something like "bailout, then break up into 50 smaller institutions immediately afterwards", I would not be so upset about it.
- _lazlo 5y ago
  Bank crises are caused because of fractional reserve banking. Don’t need to bail out anyone if there’s no liquidity issue!
- 5y ago
qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
"The Bank "never goes broke." If the Bank runs out of money, the Banker may issue as much as needed by writing on any ordinary paper. (in the direction of the arrow) the number of spaces indicated by the dice. After you have completed your play, the turn passes to the left." Monopoly - http://richard_wilding.tripod.com/monorules.htm#:~:text=The%20Bank%20%22never%20goes%20broke,writing%20on%20any%20ordinary%20paper.&text=(in%20the%20direction%20of%20the,turn%20passes%20to%20the%20left http://richard_wilding.tripod.com/monorules.htm#:~:text=The%....
shrubble 5y ago
British baron, industrialist and prominent banker Josiah Stamp... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Stamp,_1st_Baron_Stamp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Stamp,_1st_Baron_Stam... A quote attributed to Stamp is: "Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take away from them the power to create money and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money."
hyperion2010 5y ago
That dip centred around 1954 in figure 6 is one of the clearest examples of just how exceptional the experience of the boomer generation is compared to all the rest of human history.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  The parent is referring to the chart on Page 31. By "centred around 1954" it's the post-WW2 through 1970 time window. I'm not finding the chart to be accurate in the sense of I don't see the various expected S&L crises peaks, where thousands of "banks" were merged or shutdown.
alexpotato 5y ago
From the movie Margin Call: "So you think we might have put a few people out of business today. That its all for naught. You've been doing that everyday for almost forty years Sam. And if this is all for naught then so is everything out there. Its just money; its made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong. And it's certainly no different today than its ever been. 1637, 1797, 1819, 37, 57, 84, 1901, 07, 29, 1937, 1974, 1987-Jesus, didn't that fuck up me up good-92, 97, 2000 and whatever we want to call this. It's all just the same thing over and over; we can't help ourselves. And you and I can't control it, or stop it, or even slow it. Or even ever-so-slightly alter it. We just react. And we make a lot money if we get it right. And we get left by the side of the side of the road if we get it wrong. And there have always been and there always will be the same percentage of winners and losers. Happy foxes and sad sacks. Fat cats and starving dogs in this world. Yeah, there may be more of us today than there's ever been. But the percentages-they stay exactly the same. "
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  Legendary movie + Jeremy Irons is a treasure. "It's just money, it's made up!" one of my favorites. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAqAl292ozs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAqAl292ozs
MartinMond 5y ago
Crashed by Adam Tooze is really good reading on this topic: https://adamtooze.com/crashed/ https://adamtooze.com/crashed/ https://www.amazon.com/Crashed-Decade-Financial-Crises-Changed/dp/0670024937 https://www.amazon.com/Crashed-Decade-Financial-Crises-Chang...

149 points by monort 5y ago

From the conclusion: > In the historical record, crises are like fires and the government interventions in those crises are firefighting. ... There's a brilliant quote from James Grant to the effect that the US Federal Reserve acts as both firefighter and arsonist: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-08-27/fed-s-functional-mandate-is-arsonist-and-fireman-grant https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-08-27/fed-s-funct... It's not clear that the paper even considers this perspective. Instead it seems to take the position that banking crises naturally evolve, rather than get spawned by policy missteps to correct the previous crisis.

HPsquared 5y ago
To extend the analogy, wildfires also evolve naturally but can be exacerbated by firefighting policy: extinguishing small fires too much, allowing an accumulation of flammable materials which eventually lead to a much bigger fire.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  Fires evolve according to fuel availability, wind, water and so on. They aren't active, intelligent agents commanding vast resources in a constant search for newer and better ways to socialize the losses and privatize the gains. Have you ever known a fire to intentionally cultivate moral hazard?
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    It's not just fire, there is an organic component of my analogy: the ever-growing and adaptive forest, which will take any opportunity it can to accumulate biomass.
- Aunche 5y ago
  The difference is that fires predictable, and you can have controlled wildfires. There's no such thing as a controlled financial collapse. I agree that the fed intervened too heavily during the pandemic, but I think that 2008 struck the correct balance of intervention. Several financial institutions went bankrupt and most others lost over 90% of their market cap.
throw0101a 5y ago
The James Grant that, in 2010, was one of the co-signers of the Open Letter to Bernanke: > We believe the Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase plan (so-called "quantitative easing") should be reconsidered and discontinued. We do not believe such a plan is necessary or advisable under current circumstances. The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed's objective of promoting employment. * https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.html https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.ht... The same James Grant that, in 2011, thought we should go back to the gold standard to head off the looming debt catastrophe? > How does America, looking up from the bottom of a $14.3 trillion sinkhole, claw its way out of debt? For starters, says perennial Wall Street bear James Grant, go back to the gold standard. > In an interview with The Fiscal Times, the editor of investment newsletter Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, says: “No other reform would accomplish so much to hasten the return both of growth and fiscal balance. The reserve currency franchise, which America uniquely possesses, is a kind of global credit card on which the outstanding balance never seems to come due and payable. This country needs a debit card--and the gold standard is that debit card.” * https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/06/28/A-Solid-Gold-Fix-for-the-National-Debt https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/06/28/A-Solid-G...
- hogFeast 5y ago
  The same James Grant that predicted the junk bond meltdown, the same James Grant that predicted the dot-com bust, the same James Grant that predicted the housing crash, the same James Grant that predicted the meltdown in Chinese resi...if you have experience in markets, you will learn two things: everyone makes wrong predictions, and you can be wrong now/right later. Also, you appear (for some reason, have you ever read Grant's?) not to mention any of the numerous calls on individual stocks they have got right. The macro is only part of what they do. When you are read by pretty much every hedge fund manager in the world, when they will pay $2.5k to come to your conference, and $1.3k/year for a subscription...you are doing something right (also, as someone who studied economic history, his book are first-rate...compare his books to Philip Coggan, a columnist at the Economist who has written books on economic history, it is night and day...Grant's books are academic tier quality, people who work in finance today still read books he wrote three decades ago).
imtringued 5y ago
The fact that your money loses value is an inherently good thing. Think about having a coupon for a banana. The store raises the value of the coupon above the cost of the banana because it knows that it doesn't sell all bananas in the store. It has to throw some of them out. If the coupon lost value over time according to the rate that bananas spoil then the value of the coupon would be the same as the cost of the banana. Just think about how absurd it is that the banana is less valuable than the coupon that gets you a banana. At the end of the day all you get is a banana either way. It's the same with money and labor. If money is more valuable than labor then people hoard it.

cs702 5y ago

The authors compiled data for 1886 interventions in 20 categories across 138 countries going back to the 13th century. Fabulous work. Looking forward to reading it. In the meantime, please do yourself a favor and take a look at Figure 6 on page 31, which shows that the number of interventions to rescue financial institutions around the world has been increasing consistently since the 1600's. As the authors put it in their abstract, "intervention frequencies and sizes suggest that the crisis problem in the financial sector has indeed reached an apex during the post-Bretton Woods era – but that such trends are part of a more deeply entrenched development that saw global intervention frequencies and sizes gradually rise since at least the late 17th century." And it's not only the frequencies and sizes of interventions that have increased, but also their scope. From the abstract: "The data shows a gradual shift over the past centuries from the traditional interventions of a lender-of-last-resort, suspensions of convertibility, and bank holidays, towards a much more prominent role for capital injections and sweeping guarantees of bank liabilities." In short, over the course of at least five centuries, the financial system has grown more and more dependent on governmental support.

dannyw 5y ago
My interpretation is that society has been increasingly dependent on the financial system. Who keeps cash anymore? It's almost illegal on many jurisdictions. It's no longer something you can opt out of, especially since the covid pandemic.
- soperj 5y ago
  It wouldn't be such a long build up if that were the case.
- bserge 5y ago
  So fucking nationalize them when they fail. Resell them after instating jail time for all the chief executive gamblers. Would it really be worse than bailing them out with public money?
waihtis 5y ago
> In short, over the course of at least five centuries, the financial system has grown more and more dependent on governmental support. More like: over the course of the last five centuries, financiers have grown more and more adept in outsourcing their losses to the government.

throw0101a 5y ago

One of the co-authors, Paul Schmelzing, published a paper on how interest rates have been on a general downward trend for a few centuries: * https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2020/eight-centuries-of-global-real-interest-rates-r-g-and-the-suprasecular-decline-1311-2018 https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2020/eight-cen... Interviewed recently on the Finance & History podcast: * https://twitter.com/FinanceHistory1/status/1435170755432624130 https://twitter.com/FinanceHistory1/status/14351707554326241... * https://anchor.fm/carmen-hofmann/episodes/Interest-Rates-e16rp9u https://anchor.fm/carmen-hofmann/episodes/Interest-Rates-e16... His hypothesis (23m) is that capital stock is fairly long lasting, so except for (mostly) wars and revolutions (and plagues), there isn't much demand: people want to rebuild after disasters, and so demand for capital goes up. When things are quiet then there's more just sloshing around with not much to do. The oil shock of 1970s, which caused the most recent spike in the last 40 years (which is tapering), was a fairly unique event for rates.

xyzzyz 5y ago
That interest rates were on downward trend for centuries has already been observed by Adam Smith in “Wealth of Nations” in 1776. He claimed that governments can borrow at 2%, and private borrowers of good repute at 2.5%. Considering that inflation at the time was almost 0%, these were basically real rates, and would today correspond to nominal rates of 4-4.5%. Point here is that in England, rates were already very very low in 18th century.
nonameiguess 5y ago
I would think there has to also be some trend whereby lending to untrusted third parties has actually become cheaper and less risky. As in, creditors have recourse to a court system and police they don't have to personally fund, rather than paying enforcers to find people and break knees. And wages these days are far more stable than hundreds of years ago, so whoever you loaned money to is a lot less likely to suffer drastic life-changing events that leave them unable to pay in a way you didn't anticipate. We also have better data and better predictive models. Insurance is more widespread. Some insurance is directly provided by the government with nearly zero chance of not paying. All of these factors should be expected to make it cheaper to borrow money.

specialist 5y ago

Graeber's book Debt: The First 5000 Years documents that cycles of debt crisis and subsequent forgiveness is historically normal. And probably necessary. I mean, think about it: What other remedies do we have to winner-takes-all? Progressive taxation? Government largess? Made me rethink all the bailouts, etc. Especially with the renewed scholarship on Keynesian 2.0 (MMT). I'd probably be ok with bailouts, jubilees if they were more fair, more bottom up. Financiers gobbling up all the cheddar, abandoning all their victim's, really pisses me off. Insult to injury is lack of consequences, acting aggrieved when their malfeasance is examined. Just one example being Jamie Dimon clutching his pearls when Obama Admin merely suggesting the optics of huge bonuses for execs during a meltdown was a bad look.

faustlast 5y ago
I think the course "economics of money and banking" might be of your interest. Really good insights there.
- specialist 5y ago
  Looks fantastic. Thanks. https://www.coursera.org/learn/money-banking https://www.coursera.org/learn/money-banking https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Banking-Financial-Markets-Business/dp/0134734203 https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Banking-Financial-Markets-B...
rossdavidh 5y ago
"I'd probably be ok with bailouts, jubilees if they were more fair, more bottom up..." I think it is not so much the bailout that bothers me, as the "ok, crisis over, back to normal" that happens immediately afterwards. If it was something like "bailout, then break up into 50 smaller institutions immediately afterwards", I would not be so upset about it.
_lazlo 5y ago
Bank crises are caused because of fractional reserve banking. Don’t need to bail out anyone if there’s no liquidity issue!
5y ago

qwertyuiop_ 5y ago

"The Bank "never goes broke." If the Bank runs out of money, the Banker may issue as much as needed by writing on any ordinary paper. (in the direction of the arrow) the number of spaces indicated by the dice. After you have completed your play, the turn passes to the left." Monopoly - http://richard_wilding.tripod.com/monorules.htm#:~:text=The%20Bank%20%22never%20goes%20broke,writing%20on%20any%20ordinary%20paper.&text=(in%20the%20direction%20of%20the,turn%20passes%20to%20the%20left http://richard_wilding.tripod.com/monorules.htm#:~:text=The%....

shrubble 5y ago

British baron, industrialist and prominent banker Josiah Stamp... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Stamp,_1st_Baron_Stamp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Stamp,_1st_Baron_Stam... A quote attributed to Stamp is: "Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take away from them the power to create money and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money."

hyperion2010 5y ago

That dip centred around 1954 in figure 6 is one of the clearest examples of just how exceptional the experience of the boomer generation is compared to all the rest of human history.

redis_mlc 5y ago
The parent is referring to the chart on Page 31. By "centred around 1954" it's the post-WW2 through 1970 time window. I'm not finding the chart to be accurate in the sense of I don't see the various expected S&L crises peaks, where thousands of "banks" were merged or shutdown.

alexpotato 5y ago

From the movie Margin Call: "So you think we might have put a few people out of business today. That its all for naught. You've been doing that everyday for almost forty years Sam. And if this is all for naught then so is everything out there. Its just money; its made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong. And it's certainly no different today than its ever been. 1637, 1797, 1819, 37, 57, 84, 1901, 07, 29, 1937, 1974, 1987-Jesus, didn't that fuck up me up good-92, 97, 2000 and whatever we want to call this. It's all just the same thing over and over; we can't help ourselves. And you and I can't control it, or stop it, or even slow it. Or even ever-so-slightly alter it. We just react. And we make a lot money if we get it right. And we get left by the side of the side of the road if we get it wrong. And there have always been and there always will be the same percentage of winners and losers. Happy foxes and sad sacks. Fat cats and starving dogs in this world. Yeah, there may be more of us today than there's ever been. But the percentages-they stay exactly the same. "

arthurcolle 5y ago
Legendary movie + Jeremy Irons is a treasure. "It's just money, it's made up!" one of my favorites. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAqAl292ozs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAqAl292ozs

MartinMond 5y ago

Crashed by Adam Tooze is really good reading on this topic: https://adamtooze.com/crashed/ https://adamtooze.com/crashed/ https://www.amazon.com/Crashed-Decade-Financial-Crises-Changed/dp/0670024937 https://www.amazon.com/Crashed-Decade-Financial-Crises-Chang...