Informational pattern

Trigger vs root cause

The event that makes a crisis visible is treated as the event that created the system's vulnerability.

The diagnostic question

Would a different shock have exposed the same underlying fragility?

What to look for

The timeline begins at the most dramatic moment
Pre-existing fragility receives little attention
Prevention is reduced to stopping one event

See it in context

Public analyses using this lens

The collapse of Lehman Brothers

Did Lehman Brothers cause the 2008 financial crisis?

Lehman's failure was a decisive trigger and amplifier, but mortgage losses, leverage, opaque exposures, and fragile short-term funding had already created a systemic crisis.

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The 1973-1974 oil shock

Did the 1973 oil embargo cause stagflation?

It was a major shock that raised costs and weakened output, but inflation had begun earlier and persistence also reflected policy, expectations, productivity, food prices, and later energy shocks.

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The Great Depression

Did Smoot-Hawley cause the Great Depression?

It damaged trade and deepened the downturn, but the Depression began before the tariff and became catastrophic through banking panics, monetary contraction, deflation, debt, and the gold standard.

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The subprime mortgage crisis

Did subprime borrowers cause the financial crisis?

Their defaults helped trigger losses, but securitisation, leverage, ratings, opaque exposures, runnable funding, and regulatory failures turned mortgage risk into a global systemic crisis.

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