The This-Time-Is-Different Syndrome

1. The buildup to the emerging market defaults of the 1930s

The thinking at the time: There will never again be another world war; greater political stability and strong global growth will be sustained indefinitely; and debt burdens in developing countries are low.

2. The debt crisis of the 1980s

The thinking at the time: Commodity prices are strong, interest rates are low, oil money is being "recycled", there are skilled technocrats in government, money is being used for high-tech return infrastructure investments, and bank loans are made instead of bond loans, as in the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. With individual banks taking up large blocks of loans, there will be incentive for information gathering and monitoring to ensure the monies are well spent and the loans repaid.

3. The debt crisis of the 1990s in Asia

The thinking at the time: The region has a conservative fiscal policy, stable exchange rates, high rates of growth and saving, and no remembered history of financial crisis.

4. The debt crisis of the 1990s and early 2000s in Latin America

The thinking at the time: The debts are bond debts, not bank debts. (Note how the pendulum swings between the belief that bond debt is safer and the belief that bank debt is safer.) With orders of magnitude more debt holders in the case of bonds than in the case of international banks, countries will be much more hesitant to try to default because renegociation would be so difficult.

5. The United States in the run-up to the financial crisis of the late 2000s (The Second Great Contraction)

The thinking at the time: Everyting is fine because of globalization, the technology boom, our superior financial system, our better understanding of monetary policy, and the phenomenon of securitized debt.

Fonte: "This time is different. Eight centuries of financial folly", Carmen Reinhard & Kenneth Rogoff (Princeton University Press 2009), páginas 15 a 20.