…13: 9780521663465 This is the first full-length study of five U.S. banking panics of the Great Depression. Professor Wicker reconstructs a close historical narrative of each of the disturbances, investigating their origins, magnitude and effects, and he reappraises the role of Federal Reserve officials in the panics. His findings challenge many of the commonly-held assumptions about the events of 1930 and 1931, and will be of wide interest to stud…Read More

…crisis. Gorton shows that the Panic of 2007 was not so different from the Panics of 1907 or of 1893, except that, in 2007, most people had never heard of the markets that were involved, didn’t know how they worked, or what their purposes were. Terms like subprime mortgage, asset-backed commercial paper conduit, structured investment vehicle, credit derivative, securitization, or repo market were meaningless. In this superb volume, Gorton makes al…Read More

…des us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes—from medieval currency debasements to today’s subprime catastrophe. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, leading economists whose work has been influential in the policy debate concerning the current financial crisis, provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations. The…Read More