Recurring Storms: Weathering the Future by Understanding the Past

In this article, I describe the major financial crises that evolved into economic crises during the past four hundred years in Europe, the United States, and Asia, before turning to the 2007-10 global financial and economic crisis. My focus will be Tulipmania of 1637, Mississippi Scheme of 1720, South Sea Bubble of 1720, Great Crash of 1929, Crash of 1987, Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, Dot-com Bubble of 2000, and Financial Crisis of 2007-10. I identify commonalities as well as distinguishing characteristics among the events. In the discussion and description that follows, I note that the tendency is for more common features than distinguishing ones to exist. To put all of this in perspective, let’s start with a quote: The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest [we] fall.1 As current as the topic and the description, it is amazing to understand in the actual quote that the bracketed “we” would be replaced by “Rome” since it was written by Marcus Tullius Cicero in 55 B.C. The sentence itself underscores the tendency for economic financial crises to repeat, and in doing so, to repeat in similar patterns