Socioeconomic Outcomes Of The Global Financial Crisis

This book originates from a comparative research project involving extensive collection and analysis of primary and secondary materials (scholarly literature, statistical data, and interviews with key actors) on socioeconomic outcomes of the global financial crisis in all major world regions during the last years. Offering analytical and comparative insights at the global level, as well as an assessment of the overall social globalization phenomenon, this book will be useful for scholars, students, NGOs, and policy makers.

Systematically exploring the consequences of the global financial crisis, this text focuses primarily on the impact on policy and politics. It asks how governments responded to the challenges that the crisis has posed, and the policy and political impact of the combination of both the crisis itself and these responses.

Out of the debate over the effectiveness of the policy responses to the 2008 global financial crisis as well as over the innovativeness of global governance comes this collection by leading academics and practitioners who explore the dynamics of economic crisis and impact. Edited by Paolo Savona, John J. Kirton, and Chiara Oldani Global Financial Crisis: Global Impact and Solutions examines the nature of the recent crisis, its consequences in major regions and countries, the innovations in the ideas, instruments and institutions that constitute national and regional policy responses, building on the G8's response at its L'Aquila Summit. Experts from Africa, North America, Asia and Europe examine the implications of those responses for international cooperation, coordination and institutional change in global economic governance, and identify ways to reform and even replace the architecture created in the mid 20th century in order to meet the global challenges of the 21st.

Contents: (1) The Issue and Role of Congress; (2) Two Indicators of the Severity of the Crisis: Growth and Trade; (3) Political and Foreign Policy Effects of the Crisis: (a) Effects on Political Leadership; Regimes; Perceived Countries of Influence; and Stability, Violence, and Terrorism: Political Leadership; Perceived Countries of Influence; Stability, Violence, and Terrorism; (b) Effects on Economic Philosophies, State Capitalism, and Protectionism: Economic Philosophies: State Capitalism; Trade Protectionism; (c) Effects on U.S. Leadership and Attitudes Toward the U.S.; (d) Effects on Supranational Financial and Economic Org.; (e) Effects on Poverty: (f) Budgetary Effects on Resources for Aid, Diplomacy, and Defense. Charts and tables.

This volume documents and explains the remarkable resilience of emerging market nations in East Asia and Latin America when faced with the global financial crisis in 2008-2009. Their quick bounceback from the crisis marked a radical departure from the past, such as when the 1982 debt shocks produced a decade-long recession in Latin America or when the Asian financial crisis dramatically slowed those economies in the late 1990s. Why? This volume suggests that these countries' resistance to the initial financial contagion is a tribute to financial-sector reforms undertaken over the past two decades. The rebound itself was a trade-led phenomenon, favoring the countries that had gone the farthest with macroeconomic restructuring and trade reform. Old labels used to describe "neoliberal versus developmentalist" strategies do not accurately capture the foundations of this recovery. These authors argue that policy learning and institutional reforms adopted in response to previous crises prompted policymakers to combine state and market approaches in effectively coping with the global financial crisis. The nations studied include Korea, China, India, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, accompanied by Latin American and Asian regional analyses that bring other emerging markets such as Chile and Peru into the picture. The substantial differences among the nations make their shared success even more remarkable and worthy of investigation. And although 2012 saw slowed growth in some emerging market nations, the authors argue this selective slowing suggests the need for deeper structural reforms in some countries, China and India in particular.

The impact of the Global Financial Crisis was felt in 2008 and its repercussions are still with us today. In this book, the authors set the context for examining the crisis by looking at a regional crisis that occurred a decade earlier but whose lessons about financial fragility were soon forgotten. The authors then move to the present and discuss the views of a number of economics who to various degrees predicted or forewarned of the impending crisis. In the second chapter, the elements that caused the latest and current problems in the U.S. and consequently to all economies of the world, due to the systemic risk of globalisation, are determined. The third chapter advocates the intangible and tacit knowledge in the knowledge based society of the 21st century, exacerbates the problem of moral agency in today's organisations, making the boundaries and accountability of decision-making especially vague and ambiguous. The authors apply this concept as a means to enhance the moral agency to organisations in the context of the knowledge based society, and as a key part of responsible leadership after the global financial crisis of 2008. The fourth chapter reviews aspects of the new rules that apply to investment firms and to banks, making comment on individual provisions as necessary. In the last chapter, the serious effects of a bubble and its burst in small countries in Central and Eastern Europe are looked at and discussed in detail.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

Out of the debate over the effectiveness of the policy responses to the 2008 global financial crisis as well as over the innovativeness of global governance comes this collection by leading academics and practitioners who explore the dynamics of economic crisis and impact. Edited by Paolo Savona, John J. Kirton, and Chiara Oldani Global Financial Crisis: Global Impact and Solutions examines the nature of the recent crisis, its consequences in major regions and countries, the innovations in the ideas, instruments and institutions that constitute national and regional policy responses, building on the G8's response at its L'Aquila Summit. Experts from Africa, North America, Asia and Europe examine the implications of those responses for international cooperation, coordination and institutional change in global economic governance, and identify ways to reform and even replace the architecture created in the mid 20th century in order to meet the global challenges of the 21st.

Using the U.S. Current Population Survey data, this paper compares the distributional impacts of the Pandemic Crisis and those of the Global Financial Crisis in terms of (i) worker characteristics, (ii) job characteristics–“social” (where individuals interact to consume goods), “teleworkable” (where individuals have the option of working at home), and “essential” jobs (which were not subject to government mandated shut-downs during the recent recession), and (iii) wage distributions. We find that young and less educated workers have always been affected more in recessions, while women and Hispanics were more severely affected during the Pandemic Recession. Surprisingly, teleworkable, social and essential jobs have been historically less cyclical. This historical acyclicality of teleworkable occupations is attributable to its higher share of skilled workers. Unlike during the Global Financial Crisis, however, employment in social industries fell more whereas employment in teleworkable and essential jobs fell less during the Pandemic Crisis. Lastly, during both recessions, workers at low-income earnings have suffered more than top-income earners, suggesting a significant distributional impact of the two recessions.

This provocative look at the global financial crisis argues that the United States, the European Union and Japan have intentionally and unwittingly adopted wrong-headed economic policies in a futile attempt to deal with sovereign debt resulting from the global financial crisis. It offers persuasive evidence of how the politics of austerity fail to encourage economic recovery, and proposes instead a number of alternative ideas and solutions. The book begins with a detailed breakdown of the financial crisis and the government response in the United States, with particular focus on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The author then puts forth a basic three-part plan calling for (1) fundamental tax and entitlement reform; (2) massive economic stimulus in the form of public and private investment to modernize the countryÍs aging infrastructures; and (3) mortgage relief to revitalize the nationÍs housing markets. The book concludes with specific policy proposals designed to achieve these goals and return the US economy to a state of full employment and robust economic growth. This timely and insightful volume will appeal to students and scholars of economics, public policy and finance, as well as anyone with an interest in the recent economic history of the United States.