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Every big financial crisis has its own defining characteristics, but both in origin and consequence, such implosions tend to be remarkably similar. In virtually every case, you first see a long period of excess in financial risk-taking, where credit spirals out of control. This ultimately proves unsustainable, and in the resulting bust the process of credit expansion goes violently into reverse, causing often catastrophic economic damage, from which it will typically take many years to recover. There is no quick bounce back from recessions caused by financial crises.