Too Much of a Good Thing

Abstract

Although macroeconomic policy may have caused boom to turn to bust, finance itself contributed significantly to the amplitude of the boom and the amplitude of the subsequent contraction.¹ Finance built a superstructure based on two assumptions that would prove to be flawed: first, that recessions were a thing of the past (an assumption that markets shared with policymakers [see Chapter 1]), and second, that there would always be too much liquidity rather than too little.