Over the last 6 centuries, financial
crises occur for almost always the
same reason: we increase our
debts to unsustainable levels, be
it in the government, corporate or
households sectors.
The problem is that no financial
institution is willing to tackle
credit bubbles before they burst
into severe recessions. Central
Banks are only ready to intervene
once financial crises take place
rather than prior to them. Their
main justification for doing so lies
in the difficulty of measuring excessive
indebtedness. The problem
is that there is no guarantee
whatsoever that the massive
liquidity injections by the Central
Banks post financial crisis will
be effective in jumpstarting the
economies away from recession.
Detecting bubbles is no easy task
but not an impossible one. In this
talk, I show some simple measures
to assert whether debt has
indeed become unsustainable. A dual Swiss and French citizen, Michel Girardin teaches Economics and Finance at the University of Geneva.

His video course on investment management ranks no 1 in popularity out of 980 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in Business on Coursera’s platform and has been followed by more than 650’000 students worldwide since 2016.

He holds a PhD and a B.A in Economics from the University of Lausanne as well as a Master of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics.

Michel has more than 25 years’ experience as Chief
Economist and Chief Investment Officer in the Swiss private banking sector. In 2012, he was included in Bilan magazine’s ranking of the 50 most influential personalities of the Swiss financial sector. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx