Its Not Me, Its You: the Crisis

A couple of interesting NBER papers have recently offered interesting historical perspectives on the financial crisis. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth S Rogoff have written "This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises". These authors state that a recent example of the "this time is different" syndrome is the false belief that domestic debt is a novel feature of the modern financial landscape. Michael David Bordo offers a slightly different perspective in "An Historical Perspective on the Crisis of 2007-2008". He suggests that the current crisis has many similarities to those of the past but also some important modern twists.

History and the Financial Crisis

With many of us turning our attention to the conference organised by UCD School of Economics this afternoon, I thought the following paper might be of interest. Its by Brad de Long from Berkeley, and it delves into a lot of history related to the current crisis. Available here.