A History of the United States in Five Crashes: Stock Market Meltdowns That Defined a Nation

Nations (The Complete Book of Option Spreads and Combinations), a CNBC contributor, offers a fascinating look at five major stock market crashes: the Panic of 1907, Black Tuesday, Black Monday, the Great Recession, and the Flash Crash. Nations observes that stock market crises mean more than just tanking investment accounts. They also stop people from investing, impacting job availability and the economy as a whole. While these failures don’t have a single cause that is easy to recognize beforehand, he asserts that all five studied here share important indicators. For one, they all had an external catalyst. He connects the Panic of 1907 to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which spurred insurance claims predominantly held by British insurers, causing a global bump in interest rates. Nations goes into equal depth on each case study, sharing stories such as that of Angeliki Papathanasopoulou, a pregnant bank employee in Athens killed in 2010 by rioters venting anger over the Greek debt crisis, which then triggered the Flash Crash. Nations’s focus on underlying causes is uniquely helpful given the complexities of the ever-changing and intricately connected global economy.[em] (June) [/em]