In 2008, a global economic crisis was suggested by several important indicators of economic downturn worldwide. These 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 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.
As the 2007 economic collapse picks up speed, its time to take a hard look at the performance of the U.S. national political leadership in meeting some of their most fundamental responsibilities. Its time to face the fact of serious failure over the last quarter century.
During this time, the leaders of both political parties and of major institutions such as the Federal Reserve have presided over the abandonment of some of the most solemn obligations of constitutional government. They have done this in order to embrace an agenda favorable mainly to the financial, corporate, and government elites.
On January 20, 1981, a full generation ago, President Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural address, "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem."
Archaic corporate governing systems that failed to ferret out risky business deals helped stoke the nations deepest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, a University of Illinois business law expert says.
Law professor Larry E. Ribstein argues the traditional, corporate-run firms that dominate the nations Fortune 500 are ill equipped to prevent dicey management decisions that have choked credit markets, sparking a massive, taxpayer-financed Wall Street bailout.
But he says those problems could be averted by shifting to the partnership-style structure of hedge funds, private equity firms and other uncorporate businesses, which have better weathered the crisis through controls that include more closely tying managers compensation to company financial fortunes.
Judging from what I can tell of the current financial and economic woes of the nation, I am beginning to believe that this presidential election may be a no-win proposition the loser might very well be the lucky one, indeed.
We always will have our economic downturns. They basically are cyclical and weve suffered through many since World War II. There is simply no way of getting away from them.
Our current situation, however, is quite different. This time the difficulties are not a few in numbers but entail a rather long list. Neither are they simplistic but instead very complex, and I believe that they will take quite a long time, perhaps even a decade, to resolve.
Instead of looking at a recession, we might very well be looking at a complete economic meltdown more global in nature rather than national, something that most of us never have seen.
A century after John Pierpont Morgan rescued the New York stockmarket from a 50% sell off in share prices, his blue-blooded Wall Street bank was yesterday once again at the heart of attempts to contain the deepening global financial crisis.
In an echo of the "bankers' panic" of 1907, JP Morgan responded to what is being billed as a meltdown of historic proportions by agreeing to buy its stricken rival, Bear Stearns.
The length and severity of the crisis that broke over global markets last summer has had analysts delving into their history books. George Soros, who was largely responsible for Black Wednesday, the last bout of serious financial turmoil to afflict the UK, believes there has been nothing to match the events of the past nine months since the Great Depression.
Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Fed and the man blamed by many for setting off the boom-bust in the US housing market, agrees with the man who broke the Bank of England. Writing in the Financial Times yesterday, Greenspan said: "The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war."
Republicans are taking the elephant's share of the blame when it comes to the current crisis rocking the nation's financial institutions and Wall St., according to a new national poll.
In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey of registered voters released Monday, 47 percent blamed Republicans for the current financial crisis the stock market. By contract, only 24 percent blamed the Democrats, with 20 percent saying both parties were to blame and 8 percent not blaming either party.
That has translated to good news for Sen. Barack Obama, as the poll found that more Americans think the Democratic presidential nominee would do a better job navigating the economic landscape than his rival, Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
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