Causes of Market Crashes

List of stock market crashes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_st ... et_crashes
List of recessions in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_re ... ted_States
List of economic crises: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_crises
List of banking crises: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banking_crises
List of bank runs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bank_runs
List of largest daily changes in the S&P500: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... _S%26P_500
List of largest daily changes in the DJIA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... al_Average

Checklist:
- Do banks have a lot of some type of asset that is at risk of being devalued? This is what caused a problem in '08. [Q: Are there any other entities other than banks that could cause a problem like this? I remember reading about PIMCO being considered "too big to fail" by the US gov...]

1929 Crash

Good article on margin requirements leading up to the '29 crash:
Margin Purchases, Brokers' Loans, and the Bull Market of the Twenties
by Gene Smiley and Richard Keehn
http://www.thebhc.org/publications/BEHp ... -p0142.pdf
Main points:
- "brokers' loans played a facilitating role, but not an initiating role, in the boom and crash."
- brokers' margin requirements were actually increasing from the 1860s to the 1920s. At the time of the crash the margin requirements were apparently close to what they are today (brokers were asking 45-50% margin).
- there was a dramatic increase in the number of non-bank sources of loans; tons of companies/groups/individuals were sending their money to Wall St. to earn the high interest (15%) they could get by loaning it to brokers, who in turn loaned it to speculators.
- there was a dramatic increase in the issuance of stock, and the groups who were trying to sell these companies on the stock market were borrowing from brokers to do it. The i-bankers would borrow a ton of money to pay to the company for its shares, and then the i-bankers would go around trying to sell these shares to people. It's like when you see those kids trying to sell candy on the street (I did that once myself when I was younger): you buy a big box of candy from the company and then you try to sell the candy to individuals. But if it's suddenly revealed that there's been a case of food poisoning tied to one of the candy bars, you could get stuck with the merchandise. And if you're paying a high rate of interest on the loan you took out to buy the candy/shares, you may try to get rid of the candy as soon as possible, b/c otherwise you're going to be stuck with a big loan with a crippling rate of interest.

1997 Asian Financial Crisis

Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars - Ten Years After: Revisiting the Asian Financial Crisis
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publicati ... 007_11.pdf

2007-Present Global Sovereign Debt Crisis

GMO White Paper - Reflections on the Sovereign Debt Crisis
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/f ... cellor.pdf