Policy Responses: Benign Neglect, Exhortation, and Bank Holidays

If many financial crises have a stylized form, should there be a standard policy response? Assume plethora, speculation, panic; what then? Should the government authorities intervene to cope with a crisis and if so when? Should they seek to forestall increases in real estate prices and stock prices as their price increases expand so the subsequent crash will be less severe? Should they prick the bubble once it is evident that the prices of property and corporate shares are so high that it is extremely unlikely that increases in rents and in corporate earnings could be sufficiently rapid and large to ‘ratify’ these lofty prices? When the prices of securities begin to fall, should the authorities adopt measures to dampen the decline and ameliorate the consequences?