Revised version of a paper read to the Anniversary (Fiftieth) Conference of the Islandic Economic Association on March 11, 1988. Originally published in the BNL Quarterly Review, vol. 41 n. 165, June 1988, pp. 135-145.

Paper originally published in the BNL Quarterly Review, vol. 48 n. 192, March, 1995 pp. 17-37.

The possibility of crisis in the years ahead, as in the years that followed the first half of 1930, lies in private revulsion against the dollar − e.g. by Japanese insurance companies with their vast savings and limited investment opportunities at home, unmatched by public governmental efforts...