Replay 2008
Replay 2008 — and two other episodes for the rhyme
Every modern financial crisis has six stages. Build-up, complacency, trigger, panic, contagion, intervention. Names change; structure doesn't.
The widget below applies the template to three episodes. Default view is 2008; click the buttons to swap in 1997 Asian Crisis or 1929 Great Depression and see the same shape.
For every stage, the widget shows what was visible to a normal observer on the left and what was happening underneath on the right. The gap between the two is the alpha. Reading newspapers tells you the left column; reading the plumbing tells you the right.
Each stage has a single "tell" — the one line in period reporting that, if you knew what it meant, told you everything. For 2008: "BNP Paribas freezes three funds because we can't price them" (Aug 2007). That sentence is the whole crisis in one line.
Use the stage buttons or the arrow keys to walk through 2008. When you're done, swap to 1997 and walk it. The underneath columns will feel uncannily similar. The 1929 episode is the deep cut — same structure, but the intervention is missing the modern toolkit, so the consequences are catastrophic in a way 2008 was not.
If you've heard 'this time is different,' you are likely in Phase 1.
The phases are recognisable in real time. Calling the exact turn is harder, but the structural read is doable. Pair this replay with F1's anatomy framework and F3's bubble- sizing tools, and you have the working toolkit for reading the next one as it builds.
The replay above is the official record. The widget below lets you run the alternative — what if the Fed had cut earlier, or deeper, or held ZIRP through 2014? The transmission lags come from the same rate-transmission model used in C5; we convolve your deviation path against the C5 kernel and surface the response in unemployment, inflation, and growth.
The point is not to predict. The point is to make the counterfactual legible. Small assumptions about lags and elasticities produce large differences in the headline numbers — and that uncertainty is the whole reason the debate around 2008 policy remains live.