From Jim Rickards, Editor, The Daily Reckoning:

All financial crises are the same and different at the same time.

They are the same when it comes to the dynamics of contagion, illiquidity, bank failures and the high-panic state in which everyone in the world wants his money back at the same time.

Yet each crisis is different in its specific causes.

The 1994 Tequila Crisis was caused by Mexico’s inability to roll over short-term unsecured debts. The 1998 Russia-LTCM crisis started in 1997 with Thailand devaluing its currency. That panic spread around the world through Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia and Russia before finally landing in Greenwich, Connecticut, home of Long-Term Capital Management.

Wall Street, and Lehman Brothers in particular, would have been the next victims if LTCM had not been rescued by the same banks with the most to lose. Of course, the 2008 panic had its roots in subprime