The panic of '07: as a result of comparatively limited government involvement, the Panic of 1907 ran its course quickly. Could the same happen today if free-market processes were left alone?(HISTORY--PAST AND PERSPECTIVE)

The ongoing financial crisis, with its welter of high-profile bank failures and fearsome swings in stock valuations, may seem to those of us perched on the leading edge of the 21st century like an unprecedented calamity, a contagion of turmoil that threatens to sweep the orderly, more or less civilized world of our lifetimes into a dark abyss of political, economic, and even social collapse. At long last, the direst predictions of decades past seem to be nearing fulfillment, and worldwide confidence in what we glibly call "the system" is being shaken as never before in recent experience.

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Yet this, or something very much like this, ...