Historians still argue about the exact causes of the financial crash of AD 33 that rocked the Roman Empire. The commentators of the day did not unfortunately have, let alone record, the vast amounts of data that we have become used to today. But in a world still painfully extricating itself from the crash of 2008, the key features look eerily familiar, as a number of modern day commentators have observed. An extension of credit across the empire, a sudden deleveraging, debtors failing and bank closures in a number of Roman provinces, the total drying up of liquidity in the financial system and widespread panic. The ... (full story)