**5. Concluding remarks**

Through description and analysis, this chapter has illustrated the causes and the variety of mechanisms through which past financial crises erupted. Although all crises are ultimately associated with loss of confidence in the financial system and evaporation of liquidity, the nature of crises varies across time as well as across countries. Future surprises are inevitable, but the experience accumulated from past crises suggests that the following safeguards can reduce the probability of financial crises:


<sup>14</sup> This subsection draws on [17].

*Current Challenges to World Financial Stability: To What Extent is the Past a Guide for the… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107432*

