ancient history

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Jun 12 08:25:10 PDT 1999


For anyone inclined to think that recent financial crises are without precedent, or signs of that long-awaited death agony of capitalism...

Doug

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[from IMF, International Capital Markets: Developments, Prospects, and Key Policy Issues, November 1997]

TABLE 70. SELECTED CRISES, 1870-1914

Turkey (1875) Debt default Fiscal deficits were funded by foreign

borrowing that eventually

could not be sustained.

Peru (1876) Debt default Falling guano exports and stagnation of

other revenues combined with increasing fiscal

deficits to generate a crisis.

Egypt(1876) Debt default Increased foreign borrowing to finance

consumption led to unsustainable debt

growth.

Argentina Debt crisis and Argentina's inability to (1890) institutional meet debt-service payments led to the

failure bailout of Baring Bros.

U.S. (1873) Financial crisis Bank runs and failures and fears about

U.S. commitment to gold parity

followed a stock market crash.

Greece (1893) Debt default Increased borrowing to finance consumption

led to unsustainable debt growth.

U.S. (1894-96) Speculative Speculation against the U.S. gold standard

attack parity followed the Sherman Act (1890) and

increasing fiscal deficits.

Brazil (1898) Debt default A decline of 64 percent in

coffee prices over the preceding five

years generated an external crisis.

U.S. (1907) Financial crisis Banking panic and suspension of cash

payments followed interest

rate hikes and bank failures.

Canada (1907) Speculative High interest rates in Canada (in response

attack/banking to hikes in the United States) led to excessive

crisis credit expansion that generated speculation

against the Canadian dollar.

Brazil (1914) Debt default A sharp decline in coffee prices in the

preceding two years generated

a debt crisis.



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