As the world’s political and economic leaders struggle with the aftermath of the debacle of 2008, this article asks the question: have financial crises presented an opportunity to rebuild the financial system? The answer is not straightforward. Nearly three years after the financial debacle of September 2008, the changes brought about to the financial system have, on the whole, been deemed disappointing. Of course, some measures have been taken –Basel III, the Dodd-Frank Act in the United States, the financial supervision package in the European Union, the Vickers Report in Britain. They will raise capital requirements and more generally tighten regulation, but they do not amount to a radical overhaul of the financial system. Where is the ‘New Glass-Steagall Act’ or the ‘New Bretton Woods’ called for in the wake of the panic of 2008? In fairness, it is still too early to assess the full extent of the reforms introduced in the last couple of years. But it is worth pondering on the after-effects of previous shocks in order to put both current achievements and expectations into perspective.

Genocide studies has come a long way over the past decade, having attained a level of intellectual sobriety, academic credibility, and public recognition virtually inconceivable forty years ago. At the same time, there have been signs of convergence between the fields of genocide studies and Holocaust historiography and studies. This development can be challenging for those in Holocaust studies and historiography because the relationship between the two disciplines is complicated by genocide studies’ claim to incorporate the Holocaust into its object of inquiry, whereas the reverse does not hold. There is a potentially subordinate situation here, or at least it can be experienced that way, even though Holocaust studies and historiography is a field with a substantial center of gravity, evidenced by the journals, book series, and research institutes devoted to the subject, such that it hardly needs to gesture to the relatively younger and smaller sibling, genocide studies. This article analyzes a recent critique of this convergence by revisiting the founding assumptions of Holocaust studies and genocide studies.