|
From the archive: crashes
The Financial Crisis, 2008 By John Lanchester So: a huge unregulated boom in which almost all the upside went directly into private hands, followed by a gigantic bust in which the losses were socialised. That is literally nobody’s idea of how the financial system is supposed to work
The Dotcom Bubble, 2000 by Robert Brenner Despite their infinitesimal contribution to GDP, the stock-market value of Internet firms eventually reached 8 per cent of the total for all US corporations. The reality was that most of these companies made only losses.
Black Monday, 1987 by Deborah Friedell When the stock market crashed on 19 October, Donald Trump told the press that of course he’d seen it coming and had made $200 million. He’d actually lost $22 million. It was a necessary lie, since he’d just published The Art of the
The Wall Street Crash, 1929 by Joseph Stiglitz Keynes’s great contribution was to save capitalism from the capitalists. The regulations and reform adopted in the aftermath of the Great Depression worked. Capitalism took on a more human face, and market economies became more stable. But these lessons were forgotten.
The Panic, 1873 By Jonathan Steinberg It ushered in a new era, one which nobody had experienced before: an international crisis of capitalism.
|