金融危機 ―歴史的展望―

●Michael Bordo, “An Historical Perspective on the Crisis of 2007-2008（pdf）”（Remarks prepared for the Central Bank of Chile Twelfth Annual Conference on “Financial Stability, Monetary Policy and Central Banking”, Santiago, Chile, November 6-7, 2008）

The current international financial crisis is part of a perennial pattern. Today’s events have echoes in earlier big international financial crises which were triggered by events in the U.S. financial system. Examples include the crises of 1857,1893, 1907 and 1929-1933. This crisis has many similarities to those of the past but also some important modern twists.
The crisis started in the U.S.. with the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in early 2007 and the end of a major housing boom. It occurred following two years of rising policy interest rates. Its causes include major changes in regulation, lax oversight, relaxation of normal standards of prudent lending and a prolonged period of abnormally low interest rates. Defaults on mortgages spread to investment banks and commercial banks in the U.S. and across the world via an elaborate network of derivatives. It has recently spilled over into the real economy through a virulent credit crunch and collapsing equities market which will likely produce a significant recession. The Fed and other central banks have responded in a classical way by flooding the financial markets with liquidity and the fiscal authorities are also dealing with the decline in solvency in the banking system following the template of earlier bailouts like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in the 1930s, Sweden in 1992 and Japan in the late 1990s.
This paper provides an historical perspective on the current crisis, contrasts the old with the modern and offers some lessons for policy. Section 2 describes the crisis in a bit more detail. Section 3 provides some descriptive empirical evidence putting the crisis in long-run perspective. Section 4 presents some modern parallels and modern twists of the crisis. Section 5 discusses some of the issues in historical perspective for the emerging market economies. Finally section 6 concludes with a discussion of the policy issues.

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