Looking at the past as ‘self-fulfilling panic’

A beautiful Spring morning complete with the wafting aroma of wisteria and the morning birds is really a nice time to reflect on disasters over the past decade.  We get help from the thoughtful pundits, who tend to do the same.  Here is my conclusion:

The financial crisis, the global political crisis, and our own personal crisis (potentially plural) are the clear result of leverage (financial and personal), non-linearities,multiple equilibria, and self-fulfilling panic.

To be brief, just think about overextension we have all done over the past decade….more than our individual or collective capacity – that is leverage (with its cousin, risk). Observe that old patterns and structures have diminished, so people and institutions no longer follow linear (straightforward) paths. Then note that most strive to envisage a logical stability, when in fact there are several versions of stability that clash.  And finally, most of our fatal flaws come from panic. Mine did,,,

There, that’s the answer….don’t you feel better already?