30 January 2014

Why stopping the next financial crash is an impossible dream

John Aziz

As the mid-20th century economist Hyman Minsky put it, stability is destabilizing. The American economy experienced a period of relative stability from the end of stagflation in the early 1980s until the 2008 financial crash. Ben Bernanke called this period The Great Moderation. But how do people react to a stable world? Very often, they become more tolerant of risky behavior.