The past 180 years offer a smorgasbord of financial crises to study. They include:
- The crisis of 1825-1826 – This global contagion affected Europe and Latin America. Greece and Portugal defaulted.
- The crisis of 1890-1891 – Argentina defaulted and suffered bank runs. Baring Brothers faced failure. The U.K. and the U.S. were among the nations affected by this crisis.
- The panic of 1907 – Bank runs hit Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia.
- The Great Depression – Commodity prices cratered. Interest rates and inflation soared during this global meltdown.
- The downturn of 1981-1982 – Commodity prices plunged. U.S. interest rates reached the highest levels since the Depression. This crisis hit most emerging markets.
- The debt crisis of the 1980s – Widespread sovereign defaults, hyperinflation and currency devaluations primarily hurt developing African and Latin American nations.
- The Japanese crisis of 1991-1992 – Real estate and stock market bubbles burst in Japan and the Nordic nations, also affecting other European economies. Japanese real estate prices still hadn’t returned to prebubble levels nearly two decades later.
- The “tequila crisis” of 1994-1995 – The Mexican currency collapse ensnared emerging economies in Latin America, Europe and Africa.
- The Asian contagion of 1997-1998 – This crisis began in Southeast Asia and spread to Russia, the Ukraine, Colombia and Brazil.
- The global contraction of 2008 – The bursting of the U.S. subprime real estate bubble triggered stock market crashes, currency collapses and banking crises.
The financial crises shares the following common themes:
- Capital inflows predict financial crises – “Capital flow bonanzas,” as in the U.S. in 2005, characteristically preceded the Big Five crashes and, later, the 2008 subprime meltdown.
- A wave of financial innovation often leads to crisis – The creation of new mortgage-related mechanisms intended to reduce risk boosted the 2005-2006 housing boom.
- A housing boom often portends a financial crash – Prices can take years to recover. After the Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish and Swedish crashes, home prices took four to six years to hit bottom. In Japan, real estate prices remained low 17 years after the boom.
- Financial liberalization often precedes a crisis – Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, financial crises almost inevitably followed spates of loosened financial regulation.
Source: This time is different: Eight centuries of financial folly
