Alex J. Pollock

Surprised Again! Alex J. Pollock

About every ten years, we are surprised by a financial crisis. In 2020, we were Surprised Again! by the financial panic of the spring triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not one of the more than two dozen official systemic risk studies diligently developed in 2019 had even hinted at this financial crisis as a possibility, or at the frightening economic contraction which resulted from the political responses to control the virus. In response came the unprecedented government fiscal and monetary expansions and bailouts. Later 2020 brought a second big surprise: the appearance of an amazing boom in asset prices, including stocks, houses and cryptocurrencies.

Alex Pollock and Howard Adler lived through this historic instability while managing analytical support offices for the U. S. Financial Stability Oversight Committee. Their book lays out the many elements of the panic, the massive elastic currency operations which rode to the rescue, financing the bust with unprecedented government debt, the second surprise of the boom in asset prices, including a renewed apparent bubble in house prices financed by government guarantees, as well as considering key leveraged sectors such as commercial real estate, student loans, pension funds, banks, and the government itself. It reflects philosophically on how to understand these events in retrospect and prospect.