Atlas Trail
How Economists Read a Crisis
A guided path through this wave's new institutions and events, showing how the same central bank, the same downturn, or the same policy shock reads differently depending on which school of economic thought is doing the reading.
Stop 1 of 7.
Events
Where the Federal Reserve itself began, born out of the recurring banking panics of the early twentieth century.
Stop 2 of 7.
Institutions
The institution that event created, and the central bank whose decisions the rest of this trail keeps returning to.
Stop 3 of 7.
Events
The Depression already carries three competing school explanations in this atlas. Read them before the next stop shows the same pattern again.
Stop 4 of 7.
Events
1971: the dollar stops being convertible into gold, and the fixed exchange rate world the Fed had operated in for decades ends.
Stop 5 of 7.
Events
Keynesian, Monetarist, and Austrian economists each blame something different for the decade that followed, a second three way dispute in this atlas's own voice.
Stop 6 of 7.
Events
A third crisis, a third three way dispute, this time joined by behavioral economics.
Stop 7 of 7.
Institutions
The institution built to help the Fed and its counterparts around the world cooperate rather than read each crisis alone.
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