What exhibits would you put in a “Financial Crisis Museum”?

Hello! If we were to truly build a "Financial Crisis Museum," that would be incredibly fascinating. This place can't be too serious, or no one will understand it; it needs to feel like a "theme park" filled with cautionary tales. If I were the curator, I'd probably set up these exhibition zones:

Prologue Hall: The Pendulum of Madness

Upon entering, you wouldn't see anything else but a colossal, swinging pendulum. One end of the pendulum represents "Greed," and the other, "Fear." Beneath your feet, a transparent floor reveals a continuously scrolling global stock market candlestick chart, a chaotic mix of red and green, fluctuating wildly. This entire hall uses this imagery to tell you: the history of human finance is a perpetual swing between these two forces, never ceasing.

Exhibition Zone One: Classical Era Frenzies

This is where the story begins. You'll encounter some "investment products" that now seem utterly preposterous.

• Tulip Mania (17th Century Netherlands)

  • Exhibit: A glass greenhouse meticulously cultivating several "Semper Augustus," "Admiral," and other tulip varieties that were once traded for astronomical prices. Next to it, a sign would read: "In 1637, this single flower could buy a mansion in the heart of Amsterdam."
  • Interactive: A touchscreen game allowing you to simulate being a speculator of that era, buying low and selling high tulip bulbs, to see how much you could earn or lose before the bubble burst.

• South Sea Bubble (18th Century Britain)

  • Exhibit: A large, yellowed "South Sea Company" stock certificate, adorned with fanciful depictions of gold-laden South America. Alongside it, caricatures satirizing the bubble would be displayed, such as the comical scenes of people trampling each other to buy shares. Newton would also "appear," with his famous quote inscribed on the wall: "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

Exhibition Zone Two: The Black and White Silent Film of the Great Depression

This exhibition zone would be dimly lit, with 1920s jazz music playing in the background, which would suddenly cut out, replaced by an eerie silence, followed by the sounds of people crying.

• "Black Tuesday" Experience Room

  • Scene: A room with 360-degree wraparound screens, simulating the New York Stock Exchange on October 29, 1929. Stock tickers would fall like snowflakes across the screens, and the desperate shouts of brokers would fill your ears. You'd feel as if you were at the very center of that historical maelstrom.

• "Life During the Great Depression" Diorama

  • Exhibit: A 1:1 scale diorama. On one side, vacant mansions in affluent neighborhoods; on the other, lines of unemployed workers queuing for relief soup (with wax figures). Documentary photographs by Dorothea Lange, such as "Migrant Mother," would hang on the walls, each telling a story of a broken family.

Exhibition Zone Three: Modern Finance's "Nuclear Weapons"

This section becomes high-tech, and the exhibits are more abstract, requiring many models and videos for explanation.

• "Decoding 2008" Interactive Table

  • Core Exhibit: A massive interactive sandbox using LEGO bricks to explain the "Subprime Mortgage Crisis."
    • Step One: You see many small, different-colored bricks representing mortgage loans of varying credit quality (green for prime, yellow for mid-grade, red for subprime).
    • Step Two: A "Wall Street" robotic arm haphazardly bundles these bricks together to form a colorful "brick package" (this is a CDO).
    • Step Three: As an "investor," you buy this brick package, believing it to be stable.
    • Step Four: When the "housing price decline" switch is pressed, the red bricks begin to tumble one by one, eventually causing the entire brick package to collapse. This instantly reveals how fragile this "financial innovation" truly was.

• Lehman Brothers' Last Day

  • Exhibit: A recreation of the CEO's office at Lehman Brothers on the eve of its collapse. Documents are scattered across the desk, coffee is still warm, but the person is gone. Next to it, a glass case contains a cardboard box holding the personal belongings an ordinary employee took when laid off—a mug, a family photo album, an unfinished calculator. This illustrates the cruelty of the crisis more powerfully than any data.

• "Too Big to Fail" Dominoes

  • Exhibit: A row of giant dominoes, each representing a major financial institution (AIG, Citi, Goldman Sachs...). When the first "Lehman Brothers" domino falls, it triggers a chain reaction. However, a few particularly large dominoes (marked "Too Big to Fail") would have a "government hand" reach out to prop them up, preventing their collapse.

Special Exhibition Hall: The Scammers' Hall of Fame

This hall is dedicated to historically famous financial scams.

• Exhibit: From Charles Ponzi, the progenitor of the "Ponzi scheme," to the Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff. Here, you'd find their wax figures, diagrams explaining how their schemes operated, and tearful letters of accusation from victims. This would make you understand that, often, crises are not just systemic issues but also direct products of human greed.

Concluding Hall: The Next Powder Keg?

This exhibition hall is filled with a sense of future and uncertainty.

• Exhibits:
  • A giant Bitcoin rollercoaster model, constantly rising and falling, with a screen next to it displaying real-time price fluctuations of various cryptocurrencies.
  • An interactive map about "shadow banking," illustrating how unregulated funds flow globally.
  • A display on algorithmic trading, with models of servers frantically executing "flash" trades, a realm ordinary people cannot participate in.

Finally, on the wall at the exit, there would be a mirror. As you approach, you'd see your own reflection. Next to it, a line would read:

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. — Mark Twain"

The purpose of this museum isn't for you to memorize complex financial jargon, but for you to leave with a greater sense of awe and less blind obedience.