Economic Crises Explained

Seventeen Economic Crises from 1720 to Today

Author

Algimantas K.

Published

January 1, 2026

Preface

Every major economic crisis of the past century was, in the months before it happened, declared impossible by the people responsible for preventing it.

In 1928, the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank declared that “the Federal Reserve Act has put us beyond the pale of money panics.” The following year, the US banking system collapsed in the worst financial catastrophe in modern history. In 2007, the US Treasury Secretary stated that the housing market had “largely stabilised.” The following year, Lehman Brothers failed and $11 trillion in household wealth was destroyed. In 2021, the Chair of the Federal Reserve called inflation “transitory.” The following year, inflation hit a 40-year high and required the most aggressive rate-tightening cycle in decades to contain.

These were not random failures of individual prediction. They were expressions of a structural problem with how economies are understood, managed, and communicated about. And they are the subject of this series.

Economic Crises Explained examines seventeen major economic crises spanning three centuries — their causes, their human cost, the policy responses they triggered, and the lessons that were absorbed, partially absorbed, or ignored entirely. Each crisis has a companion documentary episode on YouTube and a fully referenced chapter in this book.

Watch the Series

Series introduction · 0:52  ·  Full playlist →

The South Sea Bubble
Episode 1
The South Sea Bubble
1720
 The Long Depression
Episode 2
The Long Depression
1873–1896
 The Panic of 1907
Episode 3
The Panic of 1907
1907
 The Weimar Hyperinflation
Episode 4
The Weimar Hyperinflation
1921–1923
 The Great Depression
Episode 5
The Great Depression
1929–1939
 The 1970s Stagflation
Episode 6
The 1970s Stagflation
1973–1982
 The Latin American Debt Crisis
Episode 7
The Latin American Debt Crisis
1982–1989
 Black Monday
Episode 8
Black Monday
1987
 The Japanese Lost Decade
Episode 9
The Japanese Lost Decade
1990–2000
 The Asian Financial Crisis
Episode 10
The Asian Financial Crisis
1997–1998
 The LTCM Collapse
Episode 11
The LTCM Collapse
1998
 The Dot-com Crash
Episode 12
The Dot-com Crash
2000–2001
 The Argentine Crisis
Episode 13
The Argentine Crisis
2001–2002
 The Global Financial Crisis
Episode 14
The Global Financial Crisis
2008–2012
 The Eurozone Debt Crisis
Episode 15
The Eurozone Debt Crisis
2010–2012
 The COVID-19 Economic Shock
Episode 16
The COVID-19 Economic Shock
2020
 The Great Inflation
Episode 17
The Great Inflation
2021–2023

Each chapter follows the same structure: what happened, what the numbers show, what it did to people’s lives, how it was resolved, and what — if anything — we learned. The emphasis throughout is on the quantifiable: the GDP collapses, the unemployment surges, the inequality shifts, the political consequences, and the sociological transformations that economic crises leave in their wake.

The series is not partisan. It is not prescriptive about which economic school has the right answers. It is an attempt to look honestly at the record of economic management — the successes, the failures, and the recurring patterns that connect crises separated by decades — and to draw from that record conclusions that are grounded in evidence rather than ideology.

Algimantas K. 2026