Possible Social, Political, and Economic Implications of Major Events

Abstract

The article examines the available literature of theoretical as well as empirical scope regarding the origins and aftereffects of banking crises and summarizes the insights drawn from relevant policies adopted as interventions to address these crises and limit their impact at the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels.While originating from a variety of causes, banking crises share common patterns, since their roots can be traced back to unsustainable macroeconomic policies, market failures, regulatory distortions, and government intervention in capital allocation; such crises are frequently described by cycles of credit and asset priceexplosions and declines -and generally are addressed mainly via government intervention on a broad range of policies. When not handled efficiently and quickly, banking crises tend to impose huge costs on society by restricting the flow of credit to the real economy. Many of the possible proposals to strengthen the economic stability in an increasingly integrated financial system include making banking regulation more prudential in macroeconomics, by focusing on cycle and systemic risk rather than individual bank risk. Furthermore, by improving market discipline by limiting explicit and implicit government bank liability insurance. The global financial crisis that began in 2007 caught many by surprise, because what at first appeared to be a crisis sustained in the USA concerning subprime loans, quickly spread to financial markets around the world, triggering a large-scale government bailout activity in the financial sector, causing memories of previous crises to fade under a prolonged period of economic prosperity. When the crisis broke out, it developed at breakneck speed, infecting most financial markets around the world. Banking crises are like periodic waves that emerge unexpectedly and can destroy the real economy by restricting credit and causing costly clearances. Banking crises have been a frequent occurrence throughout history, counting almost 300 banking crises in the period 1800 to 2008.There are many commonalities between the current crisis and previous crisis episodes. Usually, banking crises are preceded by credit booms and asset price bubbles and are accompanied by intervention by the government in rescuing its finances. Although the timing of the bursting of such crises is uncertain, the burst of a crisis is many times inevitable.