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Professor Richard Sylla asserts that public perception of a crisis can be extremely consequential in financial markets

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Excerpt from The Atlantic -- "Sylla’s view of all this as a financial historian is pretty zen. 'I wouldn’t pay much attention to the day-to-day reports of the newspapers—‘Here’s a good sign,’ ‘Here’s a bad sign,’ he said. In the short run, the stock market isn’t necessarily a good predictor of how bad the pandemic will get, in part because investors are working off the same scant information as everyone else. 'What I would say history shows you is that a problem like this takes many months and maybe even a couple of years to play itself out,' he said. But, he went on, 'Wall Street’s idea of history is the last 10 minutes.'”

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