"The benefits of financial development and globalization have come with continuing fragility in financial sectors. Periodic crises have had real but heterogeneous welfare impacts and not just for poor people; indeed, some of the conditions that foster deep and persistent poverty, such as lack of...

1. 'Destruction ... and misery' : the First World War -- 2. The Great Depression, 1929-33 -- 3. The Second World War as an economic disaster -- 4. The rise, fall and rise again of OPEC -- 5. Inflation in the twentieth century -- 6. Financial crises -- 7. Stock market crashes -- 8. The demise of...