more historical context from the WSJ..

I have resurrected the blog, but the posts have been all finance lately..even though that's been occupying ~1/3 of my mental space these days. i'll have to blog about the other 2/3 sometime soon.

But here's another relatively short WSJ article from earlier this week that gives some more historical context to the current financial crisis:

"Past Crises Suggest More Waves of Pain"

Which reminds me of the famous Santayna aphorism: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

I'll pull some key paragraphs from the article over the weekend, in case you can't read the whole thing on the WSJ site (memo to Murdoch: free that content!)

Here is an intro graf:

The rhythm of the credit meltdown the past few weeks -- the daily drumbeat of falling bank stock prices, the repeated waves of investor relief and revulsion, the multiple rounds of money raising by banks that never seems to be enough -- is reminiscent of financial crises past.

Look back exactly one decade -- to the Asian financial crisis in July 1998 -- for one of many examples of the parallels.