Surviving a financial panic -- lessons from the past  By Philip
Brewer on 13 October 2008 (Updated 6 December 2008) 15 comments
Financial panics used to be quite ordinary.  In the century or
two prior to the great depression, there was a panic every 15 or
20 years.  Since the great depression we haven't had a classic
financial panic, until now.  There's a thing or two that we can
learn from panics past to help us survive the current one.  To
begin with, there's a reason why we haven't had financial panics
for the past 75 years--fiat currency.  Panics and gold  Panics
used to begin when people decided to get their hands on actual,
physical gold.  That could happen for a lot of different
reasons.  Often it was because there had been inflation--banks
issuing bank notes far in excess of the gold they had on deposit
--and people decided that they didn't trust their bank. 
Sometimes, though, it happened without any particular
malpractice by the banks, simply because there was a demand for
gold someplace else--an ec