A biased view of a few possible components when reflecting on the present decade financial and economic crisis

Abstract

Is the present economic and financial crisis similar to some previous one? It would be so nice to prove that universality laws exist for predicting such rare events under a minimum set of realistic hypotheses. First, I briefly recall whether patterns, like business cycles, are indeed found, and can be modeled within a statistical physics, or econophysics, framework. I point to a simulation model for describing such so called business cycles, under exo- and endo-genous conditions I discuss self-organized and provoked crashes and their predictions. I emphasize the role of an of- ten forgotten ingredient: the time delay in the information flow. I wonder about the information content of financial data, its mis-interpretation and market manipulation.