Introduction
The world has recently been shaken by an upheaval in the financial sector
comparable to that of 1929. These events in world financial markets have,
to say the least, given economists pause for reflection. It is worth giving a
schematic account of the unfolding of this crisis to see how it can be
reconciled with standard economic theory or whether a serious rethinking
of our theory is called for. Various explanations have been given for the
origins of the collapse. One argument is that the Fed simply kept interest
rates too low and this made it too easy for indebtedness to rise to unprecedented
levels. Some argue that deregulation of financial institutions
permitted excesses, while some others argue that government policy
which encouraged even the poor to aspire to own their own homes was
a major factor in the housing bubble. Yet another factor has been the high
propensity to save in China (see Warnock and Warnock 2006). Another
argument often heard is that banks became heavily overleveraged and they
and their clients were very vulnerable to a downturn in underlying asset