Crashes, Contagion, Cygnus, and Complexities: Global Economic Crises and Real Estate

The fundamental message of this paper is simple and fourfold. The world has endured many economic - financial frenzies, panics, and crises that, at first glance, appear to be remarkable and special, but upon closer examination, mirror each other in several ways. Typically, these historical economic crises are resultant of excessive debt, contain a trigger event that creates a "crisis in confidence", suffer a boom bust cycle with significantly enhanced financial and economic volatilities, and generate a boom bust cycle that leads to major contagion effects across the financial and real sectors and spreads internationally. Our analysis as a case study examines and demonstrates that the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 exhibits extraordinary causal features and similarities with the Long Depression of 1873.