Financial crises: lessons from history for today

摘要

Financial crises are not new. Countries all over the world have experienced economic crises for a very long period of time. However, the latest of these crises that started off as a credit crisis in the US and spread to Europe very rapidly, has distinctive characteristics. First and foremost, the origin of this crisis that evolved from a pure credit crisis into one of an intertwined banking and sovereign debt crisis in Europe within a couple of years (what is now labelled as the euro crisis) is on account of a global shock. Crises such as the 2008—2009 financial crisis where ten or more advanced countries synchronously experience a crisis are labelled as synchronous crisis.