2010.04.16 15:49:41

tycho

On average, financial crises occur every 10 years. I am sure you did not take that into account in your financial plan. Neither did I actually, until I read about this horrifying fact.

Before 2008, there was the Asian crisis in 1997 and the Russian default in 1998.And before that we had the US Savings & Loans crisis in 1989. But before that .... ?

Between 1945 and the 1980 Latin America debt crisis, not much happened. And guess what, the bankers pay was in line with equivalent jobs in the industry . A basic and populist inference would be to decrease the bankers' pay to make it more in line with the salary on Main Street, but is it that a foolish thought? 

Over the last four hundred years, we've seen on average a financial crisis every ten years, except between 1945 and roughly 1980. One of the main factors of why there was not much of trouble in the financial world is because after the Great Depression, lawmakers imposed regulations on the financial industry. Once deregulation started under Reagan and Thatcher, well, financial crises re-appeared, together with inflated payment packages, probably to compensate for the moral burden of screwing the man in the street.

financial crisis | crises | Asian crisis | Russian financial crisis | Latin American crisis | Great Depression | regulation