This time is different
Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides 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 authors draw important lessons from history to show us how much--or how little--we have learned. Using clear, sharp analysis and comprehensive data, Reinhart and Rogoff document that financial fallouts occur in clusters and strike with surprisingly consistent frequency, duration, and ferocity.
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13recommend
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2010–2024years
61% recommend39% neutral
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What Hacker News says
- I want to recommend two books on this subject, of contrasting if not tangential subject matter. “Debt: the first 5000 years” by David Graeber and “This time is different” by Reinhart and Rogoff. They differ drastically in perspective, but both discuss capitalism with a very long- term view. To respond to the posts above, I want to say that it almost always feels like a rollercoaster ride when up close, and that financial “innovation” and liberalization usually leads to corrections of varying degrees.
- > While recessions are normal, I don't think this one will be.
So this time it's different? You may be interested in the book This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly:
> Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters.
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6372440-this-time-is-dif...
- I would suggest reading This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. It is quite academic, but it comes the closest to answering this question that I have ever seen.
- Here's one useful resource to understand crypto: "This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly", paperback, 2011, authors: Reinhart & Rogoff.
- There is a whole (and very good) book titled “this time is different”
https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Time-Different-Centuries-Finan...
- A good book on a similar topic was “The Chastening” by Paul Blustein. This was about the currency disasters of the late 90’s, which interestingly also took place at a time people thought we were in a tech bubble (we were).
This time period was also known as the “Southeast Asian Financial Crisis”. To this day there are still empty 60 story skyscrapers in Bangkok because of how bad it was.
A big lesson from that event are that foreign currency reserves are never enough.
Korea had something like $300 billion in foreign currency reserves and was wiped out in days. $3 trillion is a lot, but adjusted for China’s population, and the fact that they will need to use those reserves to last 1 year maybe 2, and they start to look much smaller.
Also this kind of a crisis would not be like a tech bubble. Tech Bubbles are bad, but they do not invoke the banking system. If the banking system falls, the general rule of thumb is a minimum 10 year recovery.
It’s worth noting that this is the position adopted by George Friedman in his book “The Next 100 Years” where he predicts the fall of China and also North Korea by 2030 at the very latest.
Also check out “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly” by Carmen Reinhart from Princeton University Press.
The Chastening: Inside The Crisis That Rocked The Global Financial System And Humbled The Imf https://www.amazon.com/dp/1586481819
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767923057
This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691152640
