A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises
by Richard Vague  (Author)

About the Author
Philanthropist and former banker Richard Vague is a managing partner of Gabriel Investments, Chairman of The Governor's Woods Foundation, and author of The Next Economic Disaster: Why It's Coming and How to Avoid It, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

About this book
Financial crises happen time and again in post-industrial economies—and they are extraordinarily damaging. Building on insights gleaned from many years of work in the banking industry and drawing on a vast trove of data, Richard Vague argues that such crises follow a pattern that makes them both predictable and avoidable.
A Brief History of Doom examines a series of major crises over the past 200 years in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and China—including the Great Depression and the economic meltdown of 2008. Vague demonstrates that the over-accumulation of private debt does a better job than any other variable of explaining and predicting financial crises. In a series of clear and gripping chapters, he shows that in each case the rapid growth of loans produced widespread overcapacity, which then led to the spread of bad loans and bank failures. This cycle, according to Vague, is the essence of financial crises and the script they invariably follow.
The story of financial crisis is fundamentally the story of private debt and runaway lending. Convinced that we have it within our power to break the cycle, Vague provides the tools to enable politicians, bankers, and private citizens to recognize and respond to the danger signs before it begins again.

Brief contents
Introduction: The Anatomy of a Financial Crisis
Chapter 1. A Jazz Age Real Estate Crisis: The Great Depression
Chapter 2. The Decade of Greed: The 1980s
Chapter 3. Denial and Forbearance: The 1990s Crisis in Japan
Chapter 4. The Dawn of the Industrial Age Banking Crisis: 1819–1840
Chapter 5. The Railroad Crises Era: 1847–1907
Chapter 6. The 2008 Global Mortgage and Derivatives Crisis
Conclusion: The Crisis Next Time—and Policy Solutions

Series: Haney Foundation Series
Pages: 240 pages
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (May 24, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0812251776
ISBN-13: 978-0812251777