To see how economic mistakes can repeat time and again, you need look no further than recent history.
The Great Depression was the result of a combination of protectionism, populism, and nationalism combined with bad government policy that mired the U.S. and much of the world in an economic downturn for nearly a decade.
Similar events can be traced throughout other parts of the world, as exemplified by the Greek debt crisis that resulted when the nation gave up the ability to set its own monetary policy as it joined other nations linked by the euro as common currency. These collapses demonstrate how easy it is to assume large-scale economic failures are isolated, both historically and geographically, when in fact they are immersed in long-standing philosophies and can have immense global ramifications.
In this full lecture, Professor Ramon DeGennaro illustrates how financial institutions made mistakes that sparked the greatest recession since World War II.