Mark Whitehouse, Columnist

Trump's Debt to the Financial Crisis

Research suggests he has the 2008 disaster, in part, to thank for his political success.

Just the beginning.

Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images
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Do we have the 2008 financial crisis to thank for Donald Trump's election as U.S. president? More than a century of human experience suggests it's a real possibility.

Trump's surprise victory has prompted a lot of worrying about the wave of antiestablishment -- and often xenophobic -- sentiment that seems to be rolling across the developed world, affecting countries ranging from Greece to Britain to the U.S. It also adds relevance to a paper in which three German economists -- Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Cristoph Trebesch -- sought to put these political upheavals into historical context.