Crises in economics may be distinguished as industrial, speculative, and financial, according as one or another influence seems to be more potent, but all are essentially financial.
The change that occurs always is connected in some way with the use of money and credit.
A financial _crisis_ is the culmination of a period of rising prices, and a sudden fall which shatters the credit of some banks, brokers, merchants, and manufacturers.

Every crisis is marked by much confusion and loss and by hasty efforts of individuals and institutions to meet their pressing obligations.

Sometimes this process of liquidation goes on quietly and in other cases it becomes a wild scramble, each one trying to save himself, in which case it is a financial _panic_.
An _industrial depression_ is the period of hard times that usually follows a financial crisis.
Sec.3.

#A feature of a money economy.# Financial crises, by their very nature, are confined to communities in which the money economy prevails and where there is a developed state of industry.

The periods of industrial hardship in the Middle Ages were connected usually not with the collapse of prices, but with political oppression, famine, wars, pestilence, and scourges of nature.