
If financial crashes are inevitable, then is there any way to anticipate them and mitigate their negative impacts—to say nothing of preventing them from happening in the first place?
Answering this question is Linda Yueh, Fellow in Economics at Oxford University and author of The Great Crashes: Lessons from Global Meltdowns and How to Prevent Them. In this interview, conducted earlier this year at FinovateEurope, Yueh provides a three-step framework for identifying and mitigating financial crises. She also discusses the relationship between Big Tech, decentralized finance, and traditional finance, and how competition between these forces will foster innovation and economic growth.
Every crisis starts with a bubble, and bubbles repeat themselves mostly because of FOMO, “fear of missing out” … (T)he real danger is if you pile in because of FOMO, and you do it with debt. Because then, when the bubble bursts, that’s the second phase, the resolution. And that’s really challenging because it depends on having credible policies and credible policymakers.
A fellow in Economics at the University of Oxford and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the London Business School, Linda Yueh is an economist, writer, and broadcaster. Her latest book, The Great Crashes: Lessons from Global Meltdowns and How to Prevent Them, was named to the Financial Times’ “The Best New Books in Economics” roster. Her previous book, The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today, was named one of The Times’s Best Business Books of the Year.