The specificity of the current crisis / Alexandre Lamfalussy -- Causes, effets et leçons de la crise financière / Jean De Ruyt -- La crise financière de 2008 : une perspective historique / Youssef Cassis -- La faute à Voltaire ou à Rousseau? : la responsabilité des banques et des...

In this paper, we construct a simple model designed to capture four widely held views about financial crises: [1] Interconnectedness among financial institutions (banks) can play a major role in precipitating systemic financial crises. [2] It does so by introducing loan-portfolio opacity,...

Manias, Panics and Crashes was first published in 1978, and dealt with financial crises that were, for the most part, before World War II. Black Monday of October 1987, along with more research especially on the years from 1880 to 1893 indicated a need for a second look. The third edition had...