We examine the international propagation of the financial crisis of 2008, and compare it with that of the crisis of 1931. We argue that the collateral squeeze in the United States, which became intense after the failure of Lehman Brothers created doubts about the stability of other financial...

Will the world run out of "safe assets" and what would be the consequences on global financial stability? We argue that in a world with competing private stores of value, the global economic system tends to favor the riskiest ones. Privately produced stores of value cannot provide sufficient...