The financial shock that erupted in August 2007, as the US sub-prime mortgage market was derailed by the reversal of the housing boom, has spread quickly and unpredictably to inflict extensive damage on markets and institutions at the heart of the financial system. Included high oil prices, which led to both high food prices (due to a dependence of food production on petroleum, as well as using food crop products such as ethanol and biodiesel as an alternative to petroleum) and global inflation; a substantial credit crisis leading to the bankruptcy of large and well established investment banks as well as commercial banks in various nations around the world; increased unemployment; and the possibility of a global recession.
Many are drawing comparisons with the Great Depression, the ...
A leading economist said in Seoul yesterday that the U.S. dollar's supremacy as the world's reserve currency is facing profound challenges as the balance of economic and financial power shifts East amid the current economic crisis. "There is a slow-burning fuse underneath the dollar," Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered Bank, said in the World Economic Forum. Underscoring the strengthening role of Asia, Lyons said that the depth of the global downturn drove key emerging economies, such as China and Russia, to cite the possibility of a new global reserve currency. The forum drew ...
RobinT - 7 months ago, in poll Global financial crisis The old system worked well for the bankers (if not for their shareholders), so why should they embrace change? Indeed, the efforts to rescue them devoted so little thought to the kind of post-crisis financial system we want that we will end up with a banking system that is less competitive, with the large banks that were too big too fail even larger. It has long been recognized that those America’s banks that are too big to fail are also too big to be managed. That is one reason that the performance of several of them has been so dismal. Because government provides deposit insurance, it ...
spetr - 8 months ago, in poll Global financial crisis Challenging America will be the prime focus of extended meetings in Yekaterinburg, Russia (formerly Sverdlovsk) today and tomorrow (June 15-16) for Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The alliance is comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia. It will be joined on Tuesday by Brazil for trade discussions among the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The attendees have ...
spetr - 8 months ago, in poll Global financial crisis
