Panic by Michael Lewis

I just received a copy of Michael Lewis's anthology 'Panic' from the publishers. Michael included one of my pieces, so obviously I liked it: it's flattering to be included in a collection of the best writing on the financial markets of the best quarter-century. Lewis makes an interesting point in his introduction, arguing that the 1987 crash was the start of a long period of periodic financial crisis. He is certainly onto something. My own view is that for a long-time we swapped a business cycle for a financial cycle: there was occasional financial collapses, but underneath it, the real economy sailed on largely unscathed. It seemed to me that was improvement. Now it looks like we may have broken the pattern, and the financial crisis is going to trigger an economic crisis. But we can't be sure of that, of course.