Short answers, pulled from the story.
Economic collapse refers to a broad range of severe economic conditions, from prolonged depressions with high unemployment and bankruptcy rates to breakdowns caused by hyperinflation or sharp rises in the death rate. Identified causes include persistent trade deficits, wars, revolutions, famines, depletion of important resources, and government-induced hyperinflation.
In the first quarter of 1933, a quarter of the American workforce was unemployed and real GDP per capita was 29 percent below its 1929 level. Most economists consider the Depression severe but not a true collapse, since most banks in developed countries survived along with most currencies and governments.
By 1993, Armenia's GDP had fallen to just 47 percent of its 1990 level, following simultaneous shocks from the loss of Soviet markets, soaring energy import costs, and the war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Average consumer price inflation exceeded 5,000 percent in 1994 before tight monetary and fiscal policy brought it down to 175 percent by 1995.
The 1998 Russian financial crisis was caused by low oil prices and government spending cuts following the Cold War. Russia's default on its government bonds triggered the collapse of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, which threatened the world financial system and required a U.S. Federal Reserve-organized bailout transferring the fund to a banking consortium.
The Argentine economy shrank by 28 percent from 1998 to 2002. At the crisis's depth in 2002, over 50 percent of Argentines were poor and 25 percent were indigent, with seven out of ten Argentine children living in poverty. President De la Rua fled the Casa Rosada by helicopter on the 21st of December 2001.
Georgescu-Roegen, the founder of ecological economics, argued that the Earth's finite mineral resources are being permanently depleted and degraded, placing the world economy on an inevitable collapse trajectory. He also contended that humans are biologically incapable of voluntarily restraining consumption for the benefit of future generations, making the decline unavoidable.