Curriculum Economic Case Studies: Booms, Busts & Turning Points

Economic Case Studies: Booms, Busts & Turning Points

A walk through history's defining economic crises and turning points - from tulip bulbs to cryptocurrency - and what each one still teaches us today.

The 1929 Crash and the Great Depression How a stock market crash in October 1929 spiraled into a decade-long economic collapse. 📄 Read-aloud
The Weimar Republic Hyperinflation How Germany's early-1920s money-printing spiral destroyed the value of its currency almost completely. 📄 Read-aloud
Tulip Mania: The First Financial Bubble The 1630s Dutch tulip bulb craze, often cited as history's first recorded speculative bubble. 📄 Read-aloud
The 1970s Oil Shocks and Stagflation How two oil price shocks in the 1970s helped produce the unusual combination of high inflation and stagnant growth. 📄 Read-aloud
Japan's Lost Decade How Japan's late-1980s asset bubble collapsed into a prolonged stretch of stagnation and deflation. 📄 Read-aloud
The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis How a currency crisis that began in Thailand spread rapidly across East and Southeast Asia in 1997. 📄 Read-aloud
The Dot-Com Bubble and Bust How late-1990s enthusiasm for internet companies inflated stock prices before a sharp early-2000s crash. 📄 Read-aloud
The Eurozone Debt Crisis How a shared currency without shared fiscal policy left several European countries exposed to a severe debt crisis. 📄 Read-aloud
Argentina's Repeated Debt Crises Why Argentina has faced sovereign default and currency crises repeatedly over the past century, most severely in 2001-2002. 📄 Read-aloud
The South Sea Bubble How speculation in South Sea Company stock produced one of the earliest well-documented stock market bubbles in 1720. 📄 Read-aloud
The 2020 COVID Economic Shock How the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a uniquely sudden global recession followed by an unusually fast recovery and a wave of inflation debates. 📄 Read-aloud
The Savings and Loan Crisis How thousands of American savings and loan institutions failed in the 1980s and early 1990s, and what it cost taxpayers to clean up. 📄 Read-aloud
The 1987 Black Monday Crash How the largest single-day percentage drop in stock market history unfolded on October 19, 1987, and the safeguards it inspired. 📄 Read-aloud
Zimbabwe's Hyperinflation How Zimbabwe experienced one of the most extreme hyperinflation episodes in modern history in the late 2000s, and why it happened. 📄 Read-aloud
The Latin American Debt Crisis of the 1980s How heavy borrowing in the 1970s and rising US interest rates triggered a wave of sovereign debt defaults and a decade of slow growth across Latin America. 📄 Read-aloud
China's Economic Rise Since 1978 How China moved from a centrally planned economy toward market-oriented growth after 1978, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty along the way. 📄 Read-aloud
The 2015 Chinese Stock Market Crash How a speculative bubble fueled heavily by margin trading in Chinese stocks collapsed in mid-2015, prompting large-scale government intervention. 📄 Read-aloud
The Venezuelan Economic Collapse How a heavy reliance on oil revenue, falling oil prices, and a series of economic policy choices combined to produce one of the most severe peacetime economic collapses in recent history. 📄 Read-aloud
The 1990s Russian Economic Transition How Russia's rapid shift from a centrally planned Soviet economy to a market economy in the 1990s produced severe short-term hardship, and why economists still debate whether a slower path would have worked better. 📄 Read-aloud
The 2022 Cryptocurrency Crash How a wave of major token collapses and high-profile platform failures in 2022 exposed hidden leverage and contagion risk across the cryptocurrency industry. 📄 Read-aloud
The 2023 U.S. Regional Bank Failures How Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in March 2023 after rising interest rates hit its bond holdings, and why its failure spread fear so fast. 📄 Read-aloud
Sri Lanka's 2022 Economic Crisis How Sri Lanka ran out of foreign currency in 2022, defaulted on its debts and suffered severe shortages, and how it began to recover. 📄 Read-aloud
The Global Inflation Surge of 2021 to 2023 Why inflation rose to its highest levels in decades in many countries after the pandemic, and how central banks responded. 📄 Read-aloud
The Mexican Peso Crisis of 1994 How a sudden devaluation of the peso in December 1994 triggered a financial panic, a deep recession and a large international rescue, and what it taught about capital flows. 📄 Read-aloud