This Time Is Different

by Carmen Reinhart & Kenneth Rogoff

In this book, written after the 2008 financial crisis, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff explore the characteristics common to every financial crisis over centuries.

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“They…took an enormous amount of time to put together datasets that allow us to look back eight centuries and ask, quantitatively, whether there are any common denominators to financial crises. And the not-surprising answer is, ‘Yes, absolutely.’” Read more...

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Andrew W Lo, Economist

“Reinhart and Rogoff are two macroeconomists who have done a marvellous job in bringing together a lot of historical and international data about how unstable financial systems are. The title of their book, This Time is Different, tells you the whole theme. In many respects, the Wall Street crisis was not at all different from Argentina or Britain in the early 1990s or any number of other crises that have been fuelled by credit bubbles and mismanaged macroeconomic policy.” Read more...

Francis Fukuyama recommends the best books on the The Financial Crisis

Francis Fukuyama, Political Scientist

“I think the more interesting story in This Time Is Different is what happens in the aftermath of bubbles, which links to what we were talking about before. In the case of the US, it’s still very reliant on tried and tested formulas to try to sort out economic busts – ie let’s just reflate this bubble by using relatively loose monetary policy and fiscal policy (think low interest rates, tax breaks, government spending increases, quantitative easing). In a similar vein, the Chinese moved very quickly, with strong political will, to finance and build massive infrastructure projects and construct massive cities. They have a lot of flexibility in what they can do in the aftermath of a financial crisis and how they can execute it, because they’ve got the political will and the political ability..” Read more...

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Dambisa Moyo, Economist

“The great thing that Rogoff and Reinhart have done is they’ve assembled this huge database. They’ve gone back 800 years and you can see roughly what’s been going on with government borrowing and lending over that time.” Read more...

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Charles Morris, Entrepreneurs & Business People