In this note, we question their “interpretation” of the US historical track record, which is incorporated in Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), where we present results of 224 historical banking crises from around the world, including pre-2007 banking crises in the United States. Perhaps part of the confusion in the recent “US is different” op-eds is a failure to distinguish systemic financial crises from more minor ones and from regular business cycles. A systemic financial crisis affects a large share of a country’s financial system. They are quite distinct from less severe events that clearly fall short of.
