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The term financial crisis is applied broadly to a variety of situations in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their value^[1]. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these panics. Other situations that are often called financial crises include stock market crashes and the bursting of other financial bubbles, currency crises, and sovereign defaults.^[2][3] Financial crises directly result in a loss of paper wealth; they do not directly result in changes in the real economy unless a recession or depression follows.

Many economists have offered theories about how financial crises develop and how they could be prevented. There is little consensus, however, and financial crises are still a regular occurrence around the world.

Types of financial crisis[link]

Banking crisis[link]

When a bank suffers a sudden rush of withdrawals by depositors, this is called a bank run. Since banks lend out most of the cash they receive in deposits (see fractional-reserve banking), it is difficult for them to quickly pay back all deposits if these are suddenly demanded, so a run may leave the bank in bankruptcy, causing many depositors to lose their savings unless they are covered by deposit insurance. A situation in which bank runs are widespread is called a systemic banking crisis or just a banking panic. A situation without widespread bank runs, but in which banks are reluctant to lend, because they worry that they have insufficient funds available, is often called a credit crunch. In this way, the banks become an accelerator of a financial crisis.^[4]

Examples of bank runs include the run on the Bank of the United States in 1931 and the run on Northern Rock in 2007. The collapse of Bear Stearns in 2008 has also sometimes been called a bank run, even though Bear Stearns was an investment bank rather than a commercial bank.

Banking crises generally occur after periods of risky lending and heightened loan defaults. ^[5] The U.S. savings and loan crisis of the 1980s led to a credit crunch which is seen as a major factor in the U.S. recession of 1990–91.

Speculative bubbles and crashes[link]

Economists say that a financial asset (stock, for example) exhibits a bubble when its price exceeds the present value of the future income (such as interest or dividends) that would be received by owning it to maturity.^[6] If most market participants buy the asset primarily in hopes of selling it later at a higher price, instead of buying it for the income it will generate, this could be evidence that a bubble is present. If there is a bubble, there is also a risk of a crash in asset prices: market participants will go on buying only as long as they expect others to buy, and when many decide to sell the price will fall. However, it is difficult to tell in practice whether an asset's price actually equals its fundamental value, so it is hard to detect bubbles reliably. Some economists insist that bubbles never or almost never occur.^[7]

Black Friday, 9 May 1873, Vienna Stock Exchange. The Panic of 1873 and Long Depression followed.

Well-known examples of bubbles (or purported bubbles) and crashes in stock prices and other asset prices include the Dutch tulip mania, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Japanese property bubble of the 1980s, the crash of the dot-com bubble in 2000–2001, and the now-deflating United States housing bubble.^[5][8][9]

International financial crises[link]

When a country that maintains a fixed exchange rate is suddenly forced to devalue its currency because of a speculative attack, this is called a currency crisis or balance of payments crisis. When a country fails to pay back its sovereign debt, this is called a sovereign default. While devaluation and default could both be voluntary decisions of the government, they are often perceived to be the involuntary results of a change in investor sentiment that leads to a sudden stop in capital inflows or a sudden increase in capital flight.

Several currencies that formed part of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism suffered crises in 1992–93 and were forced to devalue or withdraw from the mechanism. Another round of currency crises took place in Asia in 1997–98. Many Latin American countries defaulted on their debt in the early 1980s. The 1998 Russian financial crisis resulted in a devaluation of the ruble and default on Russian government bonds.

Wider economic crises[link]

Negative GDP growth lasting two or more quarters is called a recession. An especially prolonged recession may be called a depression, while a long period of slow but not necessarily negative growth is sometimes called economic stagnation. Since these phenomena affect much more than the financial system they are not usually considered financial crises as such though there are clearly links between the two.

Declining consumer spendings.

Some economists argue that many recessions have been caused in large part by financial crises. One important example is the Great Depression, which was preceded in many countries by bank runs and stock market crashes. The subprime mortgage crisis and the bursting of other real estate bubbles around the world also led to recession in the U.S. and a number of other countries in late 2008 and 2009.

Some economists argue that financial crises are caused by recessions instead of the other way around, and that even where a financial crisis is the initial shock that sets off a recession, other factors may be more important in prolonging the recession. In particular, Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz argued that the initial economic decline associated with the crash of 1929 and the bank panics of the 1930s would not have turned into a prolonged depression if it had not been reinforced by monetary policy mistakes on the part of the Federal Reserve^[10], a position supported by Ben Bernanke.^[11]

Causes and consequences of financial crises[link]

Strategic complementarities in financial markets[link]

It is often observed that successful investment requires each investor in a financial market to guess what other investors will do. George Soros has called this need to guess the intentions of others 'reflexivity'.^[12] Similarly, John Maynard Keynes compared financial markets to a beauty contest game in which each participant tries to predict which model other participants will consider most beautiful.^[13] Circularity and self-fulfilling prophecies may be exaggerated when reliable information is not available because of opaque disclosures or a lack of disclosure.^[14]

Furthermore, in many cases investors have incentives to coordinate their choices. For example, someone who thinks other investors want to buy lots of Japanese yen may expect the yen to rise in value, and therefore has an incentive to buy yen too. Likewise, a depositor in IndyMac Bank who expects other depositors to withdraw their funds may expect the bank to fail, and therefore has an incentive to withdraw too. Economists call an incentive to mimic the strategies of others strategic complementarity.^[15]

It has been argued that if people or firms have a sufficiently strong incentive to do the same thing they expect others to do, then self-fulfilling prophecies may occur.^[16] For example, if investors expect the value of the yen to rise, this may cause its value to rise; if depositors expect a bank to fail this may cause it to fail.^[17] Therefore, financial crises are sometimes viewed as a vicious circle in which investors shun some institution or asset because they expect others to do so.^[18]

Leverage[link]

Leverage, which means borrowing to finance investments, is frequently cited as a contributor to financial crises^[14] . When a financial institution (or an individual) only invests its own money, it can, in the very worst case, lose its own money. But when it borrows in order to invest more, it can potentially earn more from its investment, but it can also lose more than all it has. Therefore leverage magnifies the potential returns from investment, but also creates a risk of bankruptcy. Since bankruptcy means that a firm fails to honor all its promised payments to other firms, it may spread financial troubles from one firm to another (see 'Contagion' below).

The average degree of leverage in the economy often rises prior to a financial crisis^{[citation needed]}. For example, borrowing to finance investment in the stock market ("margin buying") became increasingly common prior to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. In addition, some scholars have argued that financial institutions can contribute to fragility by hiding leverage, and thereby contributing to underpricing of risk.^[14]

Asset-liability mismatch[link]

Another factor believed to contribute to financial crises is asset-liability mismatch, a situation in which the risks associated with an institution's debts and assets are not appropriately aligned. For example, commercial banks offer deposit accounts which can be withdrawn at any time and they use the proceeds to make long-term loans to businesses and homeowners. The mismatch between the banks' short-term liabilities (its deposits) and its long-term assets (its loans) is seen as one of the reasons bank runs occur (when depositors panic and decide to withdraw their funds more quickly than the bank can get back the proceeds of its loans).^[17] Likewise, Bear Stearns failed in 2007–08 because it was unable to renew the short-term debt it used to finance long-term investments in mortgage securities.

In an international context, many emerging market governments are unable to sell bonds denominated in their own currencies, and therefore sell bonds denominated in US dollars instead. This generates a mismatch between the currency denomination of their liabilities (their bonds) and their assets (their local tax revenues), so that they run a risk of sovereign default due to fluctuations in exchange rates.^[19]

Uncertainty and herd behavior[link]

Many analyses of financial crises emphasize the role of investment mistakes caused by lack of knowledge or the imperfections of human reasoning. Behavioral finance studies errors in economic and quantitative reasoning. Psychologist Torbjorn K A Eliazonhas also analyzed failures of economic reasoning in his concept of 'œcopathy'.^[20]

Historians, notably Charles P. Kindleberger, have pointed out that crises often follow soon after major financial or technical innovations that present investors with new types of financial opportunities, which he called "displacements" of investors' expectations.^[21][22] Early examples include the South Sea Bubble and Mississippi Bubble of 1720, which occurred when the notion of investment in shares of company stock was itself new and unfamiliar,^[23] and the Crash of 1929, which followed the introduction of new electrical and transportation technologies.^[24] More recently, many financial crises followed changes in the investment environment brought about by financial deregulation, and the crash of the dot com bubble in 2001 arguably began with "irrational exuberance" about Internet technology.^[25]

Unfamiliarity with recent technical and financial innovations may help explain how investors sometimes grossly overestimate asset values. Also, if the first investors in a new class of assets (for example, stock in "dot com" companies) profit from rising asset values as other investors learn about the innovation (in our example, as others learn about the potential of the Internet), then still more others may follow their example, driving the price even higher as they rush to buy in hopes of similar profits. If such "herd behavior" causes prices to spiral up far above the true value of the assets, a crash may become inevitable. If for any reason the price briefly falls, so that investors realize that further gains are not assured, then the spiral may go into reverse, with price decreases causing a rush of sales, reinforcing the decrease in prices.

Regulatory failures[link]

Governments have attempted to eliminate or mitigate financial crises by regulating the financial sector. One major goal of regulation is transparency: making institutions' financial situations publicly known by requiring regular reporting under standardized accounting procedures. Another goal of regulation is making sure institutions have sufficient assets to meet their contractual obligations, through reserve requirements, capital requirements, and other limits on leverage.

Some financial crises have been blamed on insufficient regulation, and have led to changes in regulation in order to avoid a repeat. For example, the Managing Director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has blamed the financial crisis of 2008 on 'regulatory failure to guard against excessive risk-taking in the financial system, especially in the US'.^[26] Likewise, the New York Times singled out the deregulation of credit default swaps as a cause of the crisis.^[27]

However, excessive regulation has also been cited as a possible cause of financial crises. In particular, the Basel II Accord has been criticized for requiring banks to increase their capital when risks rise, which might cause them to decrease lending precisely when capital is scarce, potentially aggravating a financial crisis.^[28]

International regulatory convergence has been interpreted in terms of regulatory herding, deepening market herding (discussed above) and so increasing systemic risk.^[29] From this perspective, maintaining diverse regulatory regimes would be a safeguard.

Fraud[link]

Fraud has played a role in the collapse of some financial institutions, when companies have attracted depositors with misleading claims about their investment strategies, or have embezzled the resulting income. Examples include Charles Ponzi's scam in early 20th century Boston, the collapse of the MMM investment fund in Russia in 1994, the scams that led to the Albanian Lottery Uprising of 1997, and the collapse of Madoff Investment Securities in 2008.

Many rogue traders that have caused large losses at financial institutions have been accused of acting fraudulently in order to hide their trades. Fraud in mortgage financing has also been cited as one possible cause of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis; government officials stated on September 23, 2008 that the FBI was looking into possible fraud by mortgage financing companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and insurer American International Group.^[30] Likewise it has been argued that many financial companies failed in the recent crisis because their managers failed to carry out their fiduciary duties.^[31]

Contagion[link]

Contagion refers to the idea that financial crises may spread from one institution to another, as when a bank run spreads from a few banks to many others, or from one country to another, as when currency crises, sovereign defaults, or stock market crashes spread across countries. When the failure of one particular financial institution threatens the stability of many other institutions, this is called systemic risk.^[32]

One widely-cited example of contagion was the spread of the Thai crisis in 1997 to other countries like South Korea. However, economists often debate whether observing crises in many countries around the same time is truly caused by contagion from one market to another, or whether it is instead caused by similar underlying problems that would have affected each country individually even in the absence of international linkages.

Recessionary effects[link]

Some financial crises have little effect outside of the financial sector, like the Wall Street crash of 1987, but other crises are believed to have played a role in decreasing growth in the rest of the economy. There are many theories why a financial crisis could have a recessionary effect on the rest of the economy. These theoretical ideas include the 'financial accelerator', 'flight to quality' and 'flight to liquidity', and the Kiyotaki-Moore model. Some 'third generation' models of currency crises explore how currency crises and banking crises together can cause recessions.^[33]

Theories of financial crises[link]

Marxist theories[link]

Recurrent major depressions in the world economy at the pace of 20 and 50 years (often referred to as the business cycle) have been the subject of studies since Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi (1773–1842) provided the first theory of crisis in a critique of classical political economy's assumption of equilibrium between supply and demand. Developing an economic crisis theory become the central recurring concept throughout Karl Marx's mature work. Marx's law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall borrowed many features of the presentation of John Stuart Mill's discussion Of the Tendency of Profits to a Minimum (Principles of Political Economy Book IV Chapter IV). The theory is a corrollary of the Tendency towards the Centralization of Profits.

In a capitalist system, successfully-operating businesses return less money to their workers (in the form of wages) than the value of the goods produced by those workers (i.e. the amount of money the products are sold for). This profit first goes towards covering the initial investment in the business. In the long-run, however, when one considers the combined economic activity of all successfully-operating business, it is clear that less money (in the form of wages) is being returned to the mass of the population (the workers) than is available to them to buy all of these goods being produced. Furthermore, the expansion of businesses in the process of competing for markets leads to an abundance of goods and a general fall in their prices, further exacerbating the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.

The viability of this theory depends upon two main factors: firstly, the degree to which profit is taxed by government and returned to the mass of people in the form of welfare, family benefits and health and education spending; and secondly, the proportion of the population who are workers rather than investors/business owners. Given the extraordinary capital expenditure required to enter modern economic sectors like airline transport, the military industry, or chemical production, these sectors are extremely difficult for new businesses to enter and are being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

Empirical and econometric research continue especially in the world systems theory and in the debate about Nikolai Kondratiev and the so-called 50-years Kondratiev waves. Major figures of world systems theory, like Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein, consistently warned about the crash that the world economy is now facing^{[citation needed]}. World systems scholars and Kondratiev cycle researchers always implied that Washington Consensus oriented economists never understood the dangers and perils, which leading industrial nations will be facing and are now facing at the end of the long economic cycle which began after the oil crisis of 1973.

Minsky's theory[link]

Hyman Minsky has proposed a post-Keynesian explanation that is most applicable to a closed economy. He theorized that financial fragility is a typical feature of any capitalist economy. High fragility leads to a higher risk of a financial crisis. To facilitate his analysis, Minsky defines three approaches to financing firms may choose, according to their tolerance of risk. They are hedge finance, speculative finance, and Ponzi finance. Ponzi finance leads to the most fragility.

• for hedge finance, income flows are expected to meet financial obligations in every period, including both the principal and the interest on loans.
• for speculative finance, a firm must roll over debt because income flows are expected to only cover interest costs. None of the principal is paid off.
• for Ponzi finance, expected income flows will not even cover interest cost, so the firm must borrow more or sell off assets simply to service its debt. The hope is that either the market value of assets or income will rise enough to pay off interest and principal.

Financial fragility levels move together with the business cycle. After a recession, firms have lost much financing and choose only hedge, the safest. As the economy grows and expected profits rise, firms tend to believe that they can allow themselves to take on speculative financing. In this case, they know that profits will not cover all the interest all the time. Firms, however, believe that profits will rise and the loans will eventually be repaid without much trouble. More loans lead to more investment, and the economy grows further. Then lenders also start believing that they will get back all the money they lend. Therefore, they are ready to lend to firms without full guarantees of success.

Lenders know that such firms will have problems repaying. Still, they believe these firms will refinance from elsewhere as their expected profits rise. This is Ponzi financing. In this way, the economy has taken on much risky credit. Now it is only a question of time before some big firm actually defaults. Lenders understand the actual risks in the economy and stop giving credit so easily. Refinancing becomes impossible for many, and more firms default. If no new money comes into the economy to allow the refinancing process, a real economic crisis begins. During the recession, firms start to hedge again, and the cycle is closed.

Coordination games[link]

Mathematical approaches to modeling financial crises have emphasized that there is often positive feedback^[34] between market participants' decisions (see strategic complementarity).^[35] Positive feedback implies that there may be dramatic changes in asset values in response to small changes in economic fundamentals. For example, some models of currency crises (including that of Paul Krugman) imply that a fixed exchange rate may be stable for a long period of time, but will collapse suddenly in an avalanche of currency sales in response to a sufficient deterioration of government finances or underlying economic conditions.^[36][37]

According to some theories, positive feedback implies that the economy can have more than one equilibrium. There may be an equilibrium in which market participants invest heavily in asset markets because they expect assets to be valuable, but there may be another equilibrium where participants flee asset markets because they expect others to flee too.^[38] This is the type of argument underlying Diamond and Dybvig's model of bank runs, in which savers withdraw their assets from the bank because they expect others to withdraw too.^[17] Likewise, in Obstfeld's model of currency crises, when economic conditions are neither too bad nor too good, there are two possible outcomes: speculators may or may not decide to attack the currency depending on what they expect other speculators to do.^[18]

Herding models and learning models[link]

A variety of models have been developed in which asset values may spiral excessively up or down as investors learn from each other. In these models, asset purchases by a few agents encourage others to buy too, not because the true value of the asset increases when many buy (which is called "strategic complementarity"), but because investors come to believe the true asset value is high when they observe others buying.

In "herding" models, it is assumed that investors are fully rational, but only have partial information about the economy. In these models, when a few investors buy some type of asset, this reveals that they have some positive information about that asset, which increases the rational incentive of others to buy the asset too. Even though this is a fully rational decision, it may sometimes lead to mistakenly high asset values (implying, eventually, a crash) since the first investors may, by chance, have been mistaken.^{[39][40][41][42][43]}

In "adaptive learning" or "adaptive expectations" models, investors are assumed to be imperfectly rational, basing their reasoning only on recent experience. In such models, if the price of a given asset rises for some period of time, investors may begin to believe that its price always rises, which increases their tendency to buy and thus drives the price up further. Likewise, observing a few price decreases may give rise to a downward price spiral, so in models of this type large fluctuations in asset prices may occur. Agent-based models of financial markets often assume investors act on the basis of adaptive learning or adaptive expectations.

History[link]

The bursting of the South Sea Bubble and Mississippi Bubble in 1720 is regarded as the first modern financial crisis.

A noted survey of financial crises is This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Reinhart & Rogoff 2009), by economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, who are regarded as among the foremost historians of financial crises.^[44] In this survey, they trace the history of financial crisis back to sovereign defaults – default on public debt, – which were the form of crisis prior to the 18th century and continue, then and now causing private bank failures; crises since the 18th century feature both public debt default and private debt default. Reinhart and Rogoff also class debasement of currency and hyperinflation as being forms of financial crisis, broadly speaking, because they lead to unilateral reduction (repudiation) of debt.

Prior to 19th century[link]

The Roman denarius was debased over time.

Philip II of Spain defaulted four times on Spain's debt.

Reinhart and Rogoff trace inflation (to reduce debt) to Dionysius of Syracuse, of the 4th century BCE, and begin their "eight centuries" in 1258; debasement of currency also occurred under the Roman empire and Byzantine empire.

Among the earliest crises Reinhart and Rogoff study is the 1340 default of England, due to setbacks in its war with France (the Hundred Years' War; see details). Further early sovereign defaults include seven defaults by imperial Spain, four under Philip II, three under his successors.

Other global and national financial mania since the 17th century include:

• 1637: Bursting of tulip mania^* in the Netherlands – while tulip mania is popularly reported as an example of a financial crisis, and was a speculative bubble, modern scholarship holds that its broader economic impact was limited to negligible, and that it did not precipitate a financial crisis.
• 1720: Bursting of South Sea Bubble (Great Britain) and Mississippi Bubble (France) – earliest of modern financial crises; in both cases the company assumed the national debt of the country (80–85% in Great Britain, 100% in France), and thereupon the bubble burst.
• Crisis of 1772
• Panic of 1792
• Panic of 1796–1797

19th century[link]

• Danish state bankruptcy of 1813
• Panic of 1819 – pervasive USA economic recession w/ bank failures; culmination of U.S.'s 1st boom-to-bust economic cycle
• Panic of 1825 – pervasive British economic recession in which many British banks failed, & Bank of England nearly failed
• Panic of 1837 – pervasive USA economic recession w/ bank failures; a 5 yr depression ensued
• Panic of 1847 – a collapse of British financial markets associated with the end of the 1840s railroad boom.
• Panic of 1857 – pervasive USA economic recession w/ bank failures
• Panic of 1866 – the Overend Gurney crisis (primarily British)
• Panic of 1873 – pervasive USA economic recession w/ bank failures, known then as the 5 yr Great Depression & now as the Long Depression
• Panic of 1884
• Panic of 1890
• Panic of 1893 – a panic in the United States marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures
• Australian banking crisis of 1893
• Panic of 1896 – an acute economic depression in the United States precipitated by a drop in silver reserves and market concerns on the effects it would have on the gold standard

20th century[link]

• Panic of 1901 – limited to crashing of the New York Stock Exchange
• Panic of 1907 – pervasive USA economic recession w/ bank failures
• Panic of 1910–1911
• 1910 – Shanghai rubber stock market crisis
• Wall Street Crash of 1929, followed by the Great Depression – the largest and most important economic depression in the 20th century
• 1973 – 1973 oil crisis – oil prices soared, causing the 1973–1974 stock market crash
• Secondary banking crisis of 1973–1975 – United Kingdom
  

  

  Wall Street on the morning of May 14 during the Panic of 1884.
• 1980s – Latin American debt crisis – beginning in Mexico in 1982 with the Mexican Weekend
• Bank stock crisis (Israel 1983)
• 1987 – Black Monday (1987) – the largest one-day percentage decline in stock market history
• 1989–91 – United States Savings & Loan crisis
• 1990 – Japanese asset price bubble collapsed
• early 1990s – Scandinavian banking crisis: Swedish banking crisis, Finnish banking crisis of 1990s
• 1992–93 – Black Wednesday – speculative attacks on currencies in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism
• 1994–95 – 1994 economic crisis in Mexico – speculative attack and default on Mexican debt
• 1997–98 – 1997 Asian Financial Crisis – devaluations and banking crises across Asia
• 1998 Russian financial crisis

21st century[link]

• 2000–2001 – Turkish Crises
• 2001 – Argentine Crises
• 2001 – Bursting of dot-com bubble – speculations concerning internet companies crashed
• 2007–11 – Financial crisis of 2007–2011, followed by the late 2000s recession and the 2010 European sovereign debt crisis

See also[link]

Literature[link]

General perspectives[link]

• Walter Bagehot (1873), Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market.
• Charles P. Kindleberger and Robert Aliber (2005), Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises(Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 ISBN 978-1-4039-3651-6).
• Gernot Kohler and Emilio José Chaves (Editors) "Globalization: Critical Perspectives" Hauppauge, New York: Nova Science Publishers ISBN 1-59033-346-2. With contributions by Samir Amin, Christopher Chase Dunn, Andre Gunder Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein
• Hyman P. Minsky (1986, 2008), Stabilizing an Unstable Economy.
• Reinhart, Carmen; Rogoff, Kenneth (2009). This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton University Press. pp. 496. ISBN 978-0-691-14216-6 
• Ferguson, Niall (2009). The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. Penguin. pp. 448. ISBN 978-0-14-311617-2 

Banking crises[link]

• Franklin Allen and Douglas Gale (2000), 'Financial contagion'. Journal of Political Economy 108 (1), pp. 1–33.
• Franklin Allen and Douglas Gale (2007), Understanding Financial Crises.
• Jean-Charles Rochet (2008), Why Are There So Many Banking Crises? The Politics and Policy of Bank Regulation.
• R. Glenn Hubbard, ed., (1991) Financial Markets and Financial Crises.
• Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig (1983), 'Bank runs, deposit insurance, and liquidity'. Journal of Political Economy 91 (3).
• Luc Laeven and Fabian Valencia (2008), 'Systemic banking crises: a new database'. International Monetary Fund Working Paper 08/224.

Bubbles and crashes[link]

• Didier Sornette (2003), Why Stock Markets Crash, Princeton University Press.
• Robert J. Shiller (1999, 2006), Irrational Exuberance.
• Markus Brunnermeier (2008), 'Bubbles', New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd ed.
• Markus K. Brunnermeier (2001), Asset Pricing under Asymmetric Information: Bubbles, Crashes, Technical Analysis, and Herding, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-829698-3.

International financial crises[link]

• Paul Krugman (1995), Currencies and Crises.
• Craig Burnside, Martin Eichenbaum, and Sergio Rebelo (2008), 'Currency crisis models', New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd ed.
• Maurice Obstfeld (1996), 'Models of currency crises with self-fulfilling features'. European Economic Review 40.
• Stephen Morris and Hyun Song Shin (1998), 'Unique equilibrium in a model of self-fulfilling currency attacks'. American Economic Review 88 (3).
• Barry Eichengreen (2004), Capital Flows and Crises.
• Charles Goodhart and P. Delargy (1998), 'Financial crises: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose'. International Finance 1 (2), pp. 261–87.
• Jean Tirole (2002), Financial Crises, Liquidity, and the International Monetary System.
• Guillermo Calvo (2005), Emerging Capital Markets in Turmoil: Bad Luck or Bad Policy?
• Barry Eichengreen (2002), Financial Crises: And What to Do about Them.
• Charles Calomiris (1998), 'Blueprints for a new global financial architecture'.

The Great Depression and earlier banking crises[link]

• Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz (1971), A Monetary History of the United States.
• Ben S. Bernanke (2000), Essays on the Great Depression.
• Robert F. Bruner (2007), The Panic of 1907. Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm.

Recent international financial crises[link]

• Barry Eichengreen and Peter Lindert, eds., (1992), The International Debt Crisis in Historical Perspective.
• Lessons from the Asian financial crisis / edited by Richard Carney. New York, NY : Routledge, 2009. ISBN 978-0-415-48190-8 (hardback) ISBN 0-415-48190-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-203-88477-5 (ebook) ISBN 0-203-88477-9 (ebook)
• Robertson, Justin, 1972– US-Asia economic relations : a political economy of crisis and the rise of new business actors / Justin Robertson. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2008. ISBN 978-0-415-46951-7 (hbk.) ISBN 978-0-203-89052-3 (ebook)

2007–2010 financial crisis[link]

• Roubini N., Mihm S. (2010), Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance. ISBN 978-0-14-104593-1.
• Fengbo Zhang (2008): 1. Perspective on the United States Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis , 2. Accurately Forecasting Trends of the Financial Crisis , 3. Stop Arguing about Socialism versus Capitalism .
• Robert J. Shiller (2008), The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do About It. ISBN 0-691-13929-6.
• JC Coffee, ‘What went wrong? An initial inquiry into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis’ (2009) 9(1) Journal of Corporate Law Studies 1
• Fratianni M., Marchionne F. (2009), The Role of Banks in the Subprime Financial Crisis available on SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1383473
• Markus Brunnermeier (2009), 'Deciphering the liquidity and credit crunch 2007–2008'. Journal of Economic Perspectives 23 (1), pp. 77–100.
• Paul Krugman (2008), The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. ISBN 0-393-07101-4.
• "The myths about the economic crisis, the reformist left and economic democracy" by Takis Fotopoulos, The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, vol 4, no 4, Oct. 2008.
• Nitasha Kaul (2009), "The economics of turning people into things". Open Democracy 20 April, Available online http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/the-economics-of-turning-people-into-things
• Funnell, Warwick N. In government we trust : market failure and the delusions of privatisation / Warwick Funnell, Robert Jupe and Jane Andrew. Sydney : University of New South Wales Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-86840-966-5 (pbk.)
• Read, Colin, 1959– Global financial meltdown : how we can avoid the next economic crisis / Colin Read. New York : Palgrave Macmillan, c2009. ISBN 978-0-230-22218-2
• The American housing crisis / Susan Hunnicutt, book editor. Farmington Hills, Michigan : Greenhaven Press, c2009. ISBN 978-0-7377-4310-4 (hbk.) ISBN 978-0-7377-4309-8 (pbk.)
• United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law. Working families in financial crisis : medical debt and bankruptcy : hearing before the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, first session, July 17, 2007. Washington : U.S. G.P.O. : For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 2008. 277 p. : ISBN 978-0-16-081376-4 ISBN 016081376X http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS99198
• Davis Polk Financial Crisis Manual
• Williams, Mark T. (March, 2010). "Uncontrolled Risk: The Lessons of Lehman Brothers and How Systemic Risk Can Still Bring Down the World Financial System". Mcgraw-Hill. http://books.google.com/books?id=HSkjB_PGp98C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Uncontrolled+Risk:+The+Lessons+of+Lehman+Brothers+and+How+Systemic+Risk+Can+Still+Bring+Down+the+World+Financial+System&source=bl&ots=eRQHV1Q-C7&sig=K7GU1cPw9YZ9Q80anKOTLLUEeB0&hl=en&ei=4W2BTMKDIoegsQOKkJj3Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• Dwyer, Gerald P. and Paula Tkac. 2009. "The Financial Crisis of 2008 in Fixed-income Markets" Journal of International Money and Finance 28 (December 2009), 1293–1316, available in working paper version at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1464891.

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• NYU Stern on Finance – Blog explaining the Financial Crisis (follow link to research blog run by Stern faculty members which deals with financial economics)
• Crisis Talk - World Bank blog offering information on the unfolding crisis
• Financial Crises: Lessons from History. BBC.
• Rescuing our Jobs and Savings: What G7/8 Leaders Can Do – policy proposals from leading economists, sponsored by Centre for Economic Policy Research at VOXEU.org.
• Dossier on 2008 financial crisis by Radio France International's English-language service
• OECD response to the economic crisis. OECD.
• Academic paper about the effect of the financial crisis on the venture capital industry .
• Academic paper, From Newton to Financial Crisis, about how to understand financial crisis from the viewpoint of nature science and science history .
• The Global Financial Crisis, Developing Countries and Policy Responses Institute of Development Studies (IDS) In Focus Policy Briefing 7.1 March 2009
• Davis Polk Financial Crisis Manual

Peter Schiff

Austrian School
Born	(1963-03-23) March 23, 1963 (age 49)
Nationality	United States
Field	Financial Economics
Alma mater	U.C. Berkeley (B.B.A.), 1987[1]
Opposed	John Maynard Keynes,[2] Alan Greenspan,[3][4][5] Ben Bernanke,[6][7][8] Paul Krugman,[9] Christopher Dodd,[10] Barack Obama,[11]
Influences	Irwin Schiff, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard

Peter David Schiff (pronounced /ˈʃɪf/; born March 23, 1963) is an American businessman, investment broker, author and financial commentator. Schiff is CEO and chief global strategist^[1] of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a broker-dealer based in Westport, Connecticut^[12] and CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, LLC, a gold and silver dealer based in New York City.^[13]

Schiff frequently appears as a guest on financial television and is often quoted in major financial publications. He is host of The Peter Schiff Show, a radio show broadcast on terrestrial and internet radio. He is a frequent guest on internet radio^[14][15][16] as well as the host of the former podcast Wall Street Unspun.^[14][17] In 2010 Schiff ran as a candidate in the Republican primary for the United States Senate seat from Connecticut.^[18]

Schiff is known for his bearish views on the dollar and dollar denominated assets, while bullish on investment in tangible assets as well as foreign stocks and currencies.

Early life and education[link]

Peter Schiff was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Irwin Schiff, is a prominent figure in the U.S. tax protester movement, currently serving a 13-year sentence for tax evasion.^[19] Peter Schiff attended Beverly Hills High School in California,^[20] and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 with a Bachelor's degree in finance and accounting.^[1]

Financial career[link]

Schiff began his career as a financial consultant at a Shearson Lehman Brothers brokerage.^[1] In 1996 Schiff and a partner acquired a small brokerage firm that had been founded in 1980, reincorporated it in California and renamed it Euro Pacific Capital.^[21][22] The company today has more than 15,000 clients^{[citation needed]} and six offices nationwide, with its headquarters in Westport, Connecticut.^[12][21][23]

According to a 2005 article in The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut Schiff relocated the firm to Darien, Connecticut to find brokers "who think like him". The New York Metropolitan Area, Schiff says, has the biggest concentration of brokers in the country, making it easier to recruit employees.^[24] The company has offices in Newport Beach, California as well as in Scottsdale, Arizona, Palm Beach, Florida, Los Angeles and New York City. Euro Pacific Capital also holds the exclusive rights to broker some Perth Mint gold products in the United States.^[25]

Economic forecasts[link]

Peter Schiff voices strong support for the Austrian School of economic thought, first introduced to him by his father.^{[26][27][28][29]}

2002–2008[link]

In his 2007 book Crash Proof, Schiff wrote that United States economic policies were fundamentally unsound, and predicted that the United States dollar would lose much of its value.^[3] Schiff believed that the imbalance between the amount of goods the U.S. consumed and what it produced would eventually lead to problems for the U.S. economy.^[30][31] As a remedy Schiff favored increased personal savings and production which he said would stimulate economic growth.^[32] Schiff cited the U.S.'s low personal savings rate as one of the causes of its transformation from the world's largest creditor nation in the 1970s to the largest debtor nation in the year 2000.^[33] Schiff attributed the low savings rate to higher inflation and the artificially low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.^[34]

In a May 2002 interview with Southland Today, Schiff predicted that the economic downturn triggered by the bursting of the dot-com stock market bubble, an event that he had also forecast well in advance, would lead to a bear market likely to last "another 5 to 10 years."^[35][36] Later that year, following a 30% decline in the Dow Jones, Schiff reversed his call, and became bullish on U.S. stocks in nominal terms. However, he remained bearish in gold terms. In November 2002, as Schiff predicted, US stock indexes began a nominal bull market uptrend that held steady for five years,^[37] until reversing course in 2008, when they began a decline to less than half of their peak 2008 values,^[38] followed in 2009 by the Dow climbing 61% from its low point over the following year.^[39] However, priced in gold, U.S. stocks remained in a bear market the entire time. In May of 2002, the date of the Southland Today interview,^[40] the Dow Jones was worth over 34 ounces of gold. By 2011 the Dow fell below 6 ounces of gold, a nine-year decline of over 80%, in line with Schiff’s 2002 forecast.^[41]

In an August 2006 interview he said: "The United States economy is like the Titanic and I am here with the lifeboat trying to get people to leave the ship... I see a real financial crisis coming for the United States."^[42] On December 31, 2006 in debate on Fox News, Schiff forecast that "what's going to happen in 2007" is that "real estate prices are going to come crashing back down to Earth".^[42]

As part of these exchanges on Fox News and his repeated appearances on financial news network CNBC, Schiff had mentioned factors such as speculators and "the absence of lending standards" which are now seen by many^[43][44] to indeed be contributing factors to the housing crisis which began in 2007. On December 13, 2007 in a Bloomberg interview on the show Open Exchange, Schiff further added that he felt that the crisis would extend to the credit card lending industry.^[45] Following this observation, it was soon reported on December 23, 2007 by the Associated Press that "The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier at 17 large credit card trusts examined by the AP... At the same time, defaults -- when lenders essentially give up hope of ever being repaid and write off the debt -- rose 18 percent to almost $961 million in October, according to filings made by the trusts with the Securities and Exchange Commission."^[46]

Since 2007, Schiff has stated many times that if the government doesn't change course there will be hyperinflation in the US.^[3] Schiff is one of a minority of economists credited with accurately predicting the financial crisis of 2007–2010 while "nearly all [macroeconomists] failed to foresee the recession despite plenty of warning signs".^[47][48] In his book Crash Proof, he described several aspects of the U.S. economy that would lead to a recession.^[3]

A YouTube video entitled "Peter Schiff was right" became popular in late 2008 and 2009.^[49][50] The video consists of a compilation of clips of his many appearances on various financial news programs from networks including CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC and Bloomberg, most of which took place from 2005 to 2007. In the video segments Schiff explains the fundamental problems he saw with the United States economy at that time. Schiff's warnings of a coming economic collapse earned him the moniker "Dr. Doom."^[22][51][52]

2009–present[link]

Despite predictions regarding the housing bubble and automotive industry difficulties coming to fruition, as early as 2009 Schiff was receiving criticism due to the performance of some of his client's accounts in 2008, as well as controversies over the predictions themselves. In January 2009, economic blogger and investment adviser Michael Shedlock reported, "I have talked with many who claim they have invested with Schiff and are down anywhere from 40% to 70% in 2008."^[53] Later that week an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal reporting that Schiff's broker-dealer firm, Euro Pacific Capital Inc., "advised its clients to bet that the dollar would weaken significantly and that foreign stocks would outpace their U.S. peers" and that instead, the dollar advanced against most currencies, "magnifying the losses from foreign stocks Mr. Schiff steered his investors into."^[54]

The Director of Communications at Schiff's investment firm responded to the original Shedlock piece by saying, "While it is true, that our accounts have suffered badly in 2008, a fact that we have never disputed or ran from, [Shedlock's] estimates for the size of our typical client losses are exaggerated and unfair."^[55][56] Schiff personally responded to Shedlock's criticism by saying, "to examine the effectiveness of my investment strategy immediately following a major correction by looking only at those accounts who adopted the strategy at the previous peak is unfair and distortive" and called Shedlock's blog entry "nothing more than an overt advertisement (and a highly deceptive one at that) to use my popularity to advance his career," adding that losses were felt mostly by recent clients and not by others.^[57]

Schiff responded similarly to criticisms made by Wade Slome of Sidoxia Capital Management, LLC. in a September 2009 blog entry entitled, "The Emperor Schiff Has No Clothes."^[36] Schiff stated not only were the losses suffered by his clients in 2008 highly exaggerated, but also that most of those losses have already been recouped, stating that many who were down then are now up, and most long-term clients were never down at all, but merely temporarily lost some of the profits they had earned over the years.^[36]

The January 2009 Wall Street Journal article discussed the value of Schiff's predictions, and stated how deficiencies "made mincemeat of investors who took his advice in 2008."^[54] In an interview the following week Schiff likened himself to billionaire investor Warren Buffett, saying they were both "buy and hold" long-term investors. Contrasting his negative press he compared claims about accounts managed under Schiff's firm to the stock market value of Buffett's company, saying: "His approach is you buy stocks and you never sell them—you hope to never sell them—and Berkshire Hathaway is down 40% in the last thirteen months; I don't see the Wall Street Journal saying 'Warren Buffett made mincemeat out of his clients.'"^[58] The Wall Street Journal also published a letter written by Schiff in response to his critics saying: "My central investing premise, a weakening dollar and safety in gold, commodities and foreign stocks, didn't materialize in 2008. But all the ingredients were (and remain) present for those movements to occur. Over the past year, market reactions that I didn't foresee—massive global deleveraging, a knee-jerk 'flight to quality' into U.S. Treasuries and a sharp counter trend rally in the U.S. dollar—have kept the scenario from playing out."^[59]

In a November 2009 videoblog, Schiff said that five stocks he picked for Fortune Magazine in January 2009 had gained a total of 360%.^[60][61]

In a March 2009 speech Schiff said that it would be impossible for the U.S. debt to China to be repaid unless the U.S. dollar's value is substantially diluted through inflation. In September 2009 Schiff said that "I would not be surprised to see [gold] at $5,000 over the next several years" and that the 2009 stock market rally was a "bear market rally".^[62]

According to economist Paul Krugman, Schiff's Austrian approach to economics led him to incorrectly predict hyperinflation in the United States.^[63]

Political career[link]

Schiff was an economic adviser to Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign. In support of Paul's economic revitalization plan, he said: "We need a plan that stimulates savings and production, not more of the reckless borrowing and consumption that got us into this mess in the first place. Ron Paul's plan is the only one that amounts to a step in the right direction. If you want meaningful change—for the better that is—Ron Paul is the only candidate capable of delivering it."^[64]

In 2008, Schiff also endorsed Murray Sabrin for the U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey.^[65]

In an interview in February 2009, Schiff's position was summarized as a nonpartisan critique of American policymakers, comparing former presidents George W. Bush to Herbert Hoover and President Barack Obama to former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, with neither of the more recent incumbents comparing favorably to the earlier ones.^[66]

Schiff supports the reduction of government economic regulation, and is concerned that President Obama's administration may increase such regulation.^[67] Schiff says that the economic crisis of the late-2000s provides an opportunity to transition from borrowing and spending, to saving and producing. He is critical of the U.S. government's efforts to "ease the pain" with economic stimulus packages and bailouts. According to Schiff, the U.S. government's approach of replacing "legitimate savings with a printing press" could result in hyperinflation.^[68]

2010 U.S. Senate campaign[link]

In December 2008, Connecticut citizens created a website encouraging Schiff to campaign against the incumbent Senator Christopher Dodd.^[69][70] Approximately 5,000 people made campaign contributions using the web site.^[69] On February 21, 2009, a moneybomb raised over $20,000 for Schiff's campaign.^[71] In a May 2009 video blog, Schiff said that he was seriously considering a run for the senate and when questioned by a Washington Post reporter, he said the chance of him entering politics was "better than 50-50".^[72] In June 2009 Schiff commissioned a poll of likely voters which indicated that he trailed Dodd in popularity by four percentage points.^[73] On July 9, 2009, Schiff launched an exploratory committee and an official campaign website.^[69] He began accepting donations in an attempt to see if "people who really believe in freedom, liberty, sound money and the constitution are prepared to support that with an actual political contribution or to volunteer their services and work on this campaign." He received over 10,000 donations and many e-mails from around the world.^[69]

After giving some hints on The Daily Show^[74] Schiff officially announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on September 17, 2009, during the MSNBC Morning Joe show.^[18][75][76] By October 2009 Schiff had received more than 10,000 telephone calls and letters^[69] and raised over $1,960,000 (USD) in campaign contributions.

At the May 2010 Republican convention, Linda McMahon received the most delegate votes but not enough to prevent an August primary election. U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons received more than the required 15 percent of the total votes necessary to force the primary. Schiff then collected the signatures necessary to earn a position on the August 2010 GOP primary ballot, submitting at least 400 signatures over the state requirement.

In July 2010, Schiff's campaign received endorsements from Steve Forbes and Ron Paul.^[77][78]

In the Republican primary, held on August 10, 2010, Schiff lost the nomination to Linda McMahon.^[79] McMahon collected 49% of the vote, with Simmons on 28% and Schiff 23%.^[80]

Ultimately, the election was won by the Democratic Party primary winner, Richard Blumenthal.^[81]

Broadcasting[link]

From 2005 to 2010 Schiff hosted a weekly podcast named Wall Street Unspun. In October 2010 Schiff began hosting a new radio show named The Peter Schiff Show. The show is broadcast weekdays from 10am-noon ET on internet and terrestrial radio. The show has featured guests such as Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Niall Ferguson, Dennis Kucinich, Rick Santelli, and others.^[82]

Books[link]

Peter Schiff is the author of six books published by John Wiley & Sons. His book, Crash Proof 2.0, appeared on both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.

• Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse, February 2007, ISBN 978-0-470-04360-8 1
• The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-38378-0 2
• Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse, 2nd Edition, September 2009, ISBN 978-0-470-47453-2 3
• The Little Book of Bull Moves, Updated and Expanded: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market Is Up, Down, Or Sideways, 2010, ISBN 0-470-64399-4 4
• How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-52670-5 5
• The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy---How to Save Yourself and Your Country, 2012, ISBN 978-1-250-00447-5

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Peter Schiff

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Peter Schiff

• Euro Pacific Capital US Brokerage Firm Website
• Euro Pacific Precious Metals Coin Company Website
• Schiff for Senate Official Campaign Website
• Peter Schiff Online, Official book site for Peter Schiff
• Peter Schiff radio, Schiff's daily radio show
• Peter Schiff's Official YouTube channel

Elizabeth Warren (born June 22, 1949) is an American bankruptcy law expert, policy advocate, Harvard Law School professor, and Democratic Party candidate in the 2012 United States Senate election in Massachusetts. She has written several academic and popular books concerning the American economy and personal finance. She contributed to the oversight of the 2008 U.S. bailout program, and also led the conception and establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Warren attended The George Washington University and the University of Houston. She received a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 1976. Warren taught law at several universities and was listed by the Association of American Law Schools as a minority law professor throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the wake of the U.S. financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program in 2008. She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under U.S. President Barack Obama.