While most economists agree that the world is facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, there is little agreement as to what caused it. Some have argued that the financial instability we are witnessing is due to irrational exuberance of market participants, fraud, greed, too...

This paper contrasts the orthodox approach with an alternative view on finance, saving, deficits, and liquidity. The conventional view on the cause of the current global financial crisis points first to excessive United States trade deficits that are supposed to have 'soaked up' global savings....

The world's worst economic crisis since the 1930s is now well into its third year. All sorts of explanations have been proffered for the causes of the crisis, from lax regulation and oversight to excessive global liquidity. Unfortunately, these narratives do not take into account the systemic...

This paper applies Hyman Minsky's approach to provide an analysis of the causes of the global financial crisis. Rather than finding the origins in recent developments, this paper links the crisis to the long-term transformation of the economy from a robust financial structure in the 1950s to the...

This paper uses Hyman P. Minsky’s approach to analyze the current international financial crisis, which was initiated by problems in the American real estate market. In a 1987 manuscript, Minsky had already recognized the importance of the trend toward securitization of home mortgages. This...

In this new Public Policy Brief, Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray explains today's complex and fragile financial system, and how the seeds of crisis were sown by lax oversight, deregulation, and risky innovations such as securitization. He estimates that the combined losses throughout the entire...

The worst global downturn since the Great Depression has caused ballooning budget deficits in most nations, as tax revenues collapse and governments bail out financial institutions and attempt countercyclical fiscal policy. With notable exceptions, most economists accept the desirability of...