Can It Happen Again?

In the winter of 1933, the American financial and economic system collapsed. Since then economists, policy makers and financial analysts throughout the world have been haunted by the question of whether "It" can happen again. In 2008 "It" very nearly happened again as banks and mortgage lenders in the USA and beyond collapsed. The disaster sent economists, bankers and policy makers back to the ideas of Hyman Minsky – whose celebrated 'Financial Instability Hypothesis' is widely regarded as predicting the crash of 2008 – and led Wall Street and beyond as to dub it as the 'Minsky Moment'.

In this book Minsky presents some of his most important economic theories. He defines "It", determines whether or not "It" can happen again, and attempts to understand why, at the time of writing in the early 1980s, "It" had not happened again. He deals with microeconomic theory, the evolution of monetary institutions, and Federal Reserve policy. Minsky argues that any economic theory which separates what economists call the 'real' economy from the financial system is bound to fail. Whilst the processes that cause financial instability are an inescapable part of the capitalist economy, Minsky also argues that financial instability need not lead to a great depression.

This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Jan Toporowski.

Table of Contents

Preface Introduction Can "It" Happen Again?: A Reprise 1. Can "It" Happen Again? 2. Finance and Profits: The Changing Nature of American Business Cycles 3.The Financial Instability Hypothesis: An interpretation of Keynes and an Alernative to "Standard" Theory 4. Capitalist Financial Processes and the Instability of Capitalism 5. The Financial Instability Hypothesis: A Restatement 6. Financial Instability Revisited: The Economics of Disaster 7. Central Banking and Money Market Changes 8. The New Uses of Monetary Power 9. The Federal Reserve: Between a Rock and a Hard Place 10. An Exposition of a Keynesian Theory of Investment 11. Monetary Systems and Accelerator Models 12. The Integration of Simple Growth and Cycle Models 13. Private Sector Assets Management Policy: Theory and Practice Index