August 2008 was the first anniversary of the global credit crunch, during the year the world witnessed the global food crisis, soaring oil prices and some of the largest and spectacular collapse of major banks and companies around the world.
Northern Rock in Britain, Bear Sterns in the US, the real estate bubbles in both the US and Europe all crashed in spectacular fashion. Financial crisis has become such a regular occurrence, many in the West consider the periodical market failure as part and parcel of Capitalism, and the Economist in its analysis of the crisis encapsulated this attitude: “excess and calamity are part of the package of Western finance. And still it is worth it.”The supposedly sophisticated models used by major investment banks predicted a financial market crash was likely once in 10,000 years.
Alan Greenspan former Federal Reserve chairman attempted to calm the world by reminding them that this was a once in a century freak event that would eventually pass by. They said the same, however, about the stock market crash of 1987, the collapse of the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in 1998 and the sub-prime crisis. What is noticeable since the development of Capitalism is that the regular boom and bust, recession, depression, crash, crisis and collapse weather in Dutch Tulips or in dot.com companies, they occur regularly.
from Global *Issues* by Adnan
http://samotalis.blogspot.com
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