Were you one of the ones that thought the financial collapse would never happen? Did you think Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, Citibank, and AIG would never collapse? Did you think our national debt would ever approach $12 trillion dollars, with an additional $12 trillion in off balance sheet “bailout obligations”? And do you still think its completely safe to buy California municipal bonds and Federal treasuries?


If you answered YES to any or all of these questions, then perhaps you might be interested in reading This Time is Different – Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Industrialized nations quickly forget their debt obligation defaults throughout history. When the authors published a paper on global defaults, they received official letters from around the world of nations denying that they ever defaulted. In the case of Japan, when the authors corrected them with the proof, Japan’s remark was “Well OK, but it was only to our enemies”.

If you are interested in the history of financial crisis’s, currency collapses, and the history of government defaults, then this book is for you.

This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen M. Reinhart