History 2186A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Washington Mutual, Life Insurance, Classic Case
23 Apr 2016
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A trait of a failing stock market is large quantities of margin calls - or quick selling of stock or bonds in order to salvage value at rock bottom price: currency crises. The kipper-und wipperzeit - act of weighing coins on scale and using tricks to shortchange. Coins have milled edges so they cannot be shaved down and protects against theft/forgery (ex. Debasement - melting down coins and adding other metals to produce more product appearing as a higher value metal. Clipping shave off a little bit of the coin, save them up, melt them down, and make new coins. You need a lot of coins to do this it takes a while but is worth it. Became very common place in societies using precious metal coins. You had to trust that the coins had the amount of precious metal in them that you expected them to.
