A biased view of a few possible components when reflecting on the present decade financial and economic crisis

Abstract: Is the present economic and financial crisis similar to some previous one? It would be so nice to prove that universality laws exist for predicting such rare events under a minimum set of realistic hypotheses. First, I briefly recall whether patterns, like business cycles, are indeed found, and can be modeled within a statistical physics, or econophysics, framework. I point to a simulation model for describing such so called business cycles, under exo- and endo-genous conditions I discuss self-organized and provoked crashes and their predictions. I emphasize the role of an of- ten forgotten ingredient: the time delay in the information flow. I wonder about the information content of financial data, its mis-interpretation and market manipulation.