The US Financial Crisis
Order Code RL34742 The U.S. Financial Crisis: The Global Dimension with Implications for U.S. Policy November 18, 2008 Dick K. Nanto, Coordinator, Martin A. Weiss, James K. Jackson, Ben Dolven, Wayne M. Morrison, and William H. Cooper Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division J. Michael Donnelly Information Research Specialist Knowledge Services Group The U.S. Financial Crisis: The Global Dimension with Implications for U.S. Policy Summary What began as a bursting of the U.S. housing market bubble and a rise in foreclosures has ballooned into a global financial crisis. Some of the largest and most venerable banks, investment houses, and insurance companies have either declared bankruptcy or have had to be rescued financially. In October 2008, credit flows froze, lender confidence dropped, and one after another the economies of countries around the world dipped toward recession. The crisis exposed fundamental weaknesses in financial systems worldwide, and despite coordinated easing of monetary policy by governments and trillions of dollars in intervention by governments and the International Monetary Fund, the crisis continues. The process for coping with the crisis by countries across the globe has been manifest in four basic phases. The first has been intervention to contain the contagion and restore confidence in the system. This has required extraordinary measures both in scope, cost, and extent of government reach. The second has been coping with the secondary effects of the crisis, particularly the slowdown in economic activity and flight of capital from countries in emerging markets and elsewhere who have been affected by the crisis. The third phase of this process is to make changes in the financial system to reduce risk and prevent future crises.
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