Macrovision

Is that 2008? No, it's 1987. And then, after that, 1998. People, the media especially, are fond of the word "unprecedented". Sure, the current financial crisis is in some ways unique, in some aspects truly different from what had happened before. But it is definitely not the first time that loss of confidence, market panic and loss of liquidity has happened on a mass scale in the economies of the world. Grand old investment banks may collapse, some markets may be nationalised, the financial system might come out looking completely different---but, at the end of the day, life goes on. Deeper shit has happened before, and the world has come out of it alive and, eventually, well. Alarmist rhetoric along the lines of 'we may not have an economy on Monday' is quite uncalled for.
Eric Hobsbawm noted, 12 years ago in the preface to The Age of Extremes, how people today no longer have a sense of the past. Seeing how so many are running around "stunned", "surprised" and "shocked" about the current crisis, as if nothing like it had happened before, surely vindicates his argument that we are sorely in need of a sense of historical perspective.

And that, by the way, was the hundredth post.