Thread: Contours of Crisis

Contours of Crisis

By Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan
Dollars and Sense


This is the first in a series of short articles we plan to write on the current crisis. Our aim in this series is threefold: to outline some of the important contours of the crisis; to situate these patterns in historical context; and to reflect on their possible causes and implications.

Since the crisis is still ongoing, such analysis can only be cursory and suggestive. But it is nonetheless useful to put our preliminary research and thoughts in writing. By spelling out what we do know (or think we know) about the crisis, we can better identify what we don’t know and need to ask.

This paper sets the stage for the series. It outlines the conventional wisdom about the cause of crisis; it describes the chronology of events; and it contrasts the pattern and magnitude of the current downturn with those of earlier episodes. The overall picture painted by this analysis is highly stylized: crises appear to come and go with remarkable regularity, their oscillations are fairly similar and they share the same order of magnitude. The whole process seems almost “automatic,â€

Contours of Crisis II: Fiction and Reality


By Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan
Dollars and Sense


This is the second in our Contours of Crisis paper series. The first article set the stage for the series. It began by outlining the conventional view that this is a finance-led crisis, that this turmoil was triggered and amplified by “financial excessesâ€