(…the President) insisting that the crisis came “solely from our extravagant and vicious system of paper currency and bank credits, exciting the people to wild speculations and gambling in stocks.
The period (of the past 10 years) was one in which it was easy to grow rich. There was a steady increase in the value of property and commodities, and an active market all the time. One had only to buy anything and wait, to sell at a profit; sometimes, as in real estate for instance, at a very large profit in a short time. (- a well-respected leading banker)
As you will have seen, I have not been posting much over the past several weeks. Indeed a few kind readers have gone so far as to contact me directly to ask why and in some cases to compare notes on the unfolding financial drama. There have been two main (entirely unrelated) reasons for my recent silence. The first is simply – I’ve been very very busy: as anyone who has ever started a business will know, there aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week. I suppose the economic backdrop only contributes further to an already innate sense of urgency. The second is more practical: insofar as I can make an intelligent contribution to understanding current events and more to the point, what actions might be intelligent or appropriate and what opportunities and outcomes may now be possible or probable, it is almost certainly in taking a step (or several) back from the torrent of daily news-flow.
Not that blow-by-blow commentary is not valuable – I’ve been enormously impressed with the breadth and quality of (informed) opinion that the new information ecology has provided me in these incredible markets – just that there are many people who are already doing it, and in many cases exceptionally well – better than I ever could.
There are a number of observations I think are worth making (many though not all, would in fact dredge up ideas that have formed the foundations of the narrative here over the past three years.) And most of these I think would be more or less immune to the vagaries of the swirling markets (and so ‘waiting for it to play out’ / ‘waiting for the dust to settle’ is not really a relevant or accurate excuse.) What I have struggled with is how to articulate these observations – eloquently, concisely but yet accurately, with context – in the short form that is a blog post. At the risk of being delusional, I kept thinking to myself that this or that thesis was the basis for a chapter in a book…
There is one theme in particular – at the heart of the current crisis – that I am very keen to develop, as much as anything to organize my own thinking on the subject as so often is the case. Not the least because in addition to helping to explain the current situation, I think it will be an enormously fertile ground for generating business opportunities in the next financial services industry paradigm. (Can we now all agree that the prevailing paradigm is now well and truly dead or dying and that something new and different will emerge from the ashes of the current wreckage? Hey, if you like we can even call it the sixth paradigm, but I’m open to suggestions. 
So watch this space: Part 1 later this week…
PS The first quote above is President James Buchanan in…1857. The second, Thomas Mellon speaking following the panic of 1873. (Both via Ron Chernow’s remarkable biography: Titan – The Life of John D. Rockefeller.) 2008 is bigger. Global. But not unique. It is also worth noting that the roots of some of the great fortunes of the 19th century can be traced back to the opportunities thrown up by these brief periods of extreme turbulence and distress.