Increased debt burden or over-leveraging Leverage Ratios of Investment Banks Increased Significantly 2003-2007U.S. households and financial institutions became increasingly indebted or overleveraged during the years preceding the crisis. This increased their vulnerability to the collapse of the housing bubble and worsened the ensuing economic downturn. Key statistics include: USA household debt as a percentage of annual disposable personal income was 127% at the end of 2007, versus 77% in 1990.[67] U.S. home mortgage debt relative to gross domestic product (GDP) increased from an average of 46% during the 1990s to 73% during 2008, reaching $10.5 trillion.[19] In 1981, U.S. private debt was 123% of GDP; by the third quarter of 2008, it was 290%.[68] From 2004-07, the top five U.S. investment banks each significantly increased their financial leverage (see diagram), which increased their vulnerability to a financial shock. These five institutions reported over $4.1 trillion in debt for fiscal year 2007, about 30% of USA nominal GDP for 2007. Lehman Brothers was liquidated, Bear Stearns andMerrill Lynch were sold at fire-sale prices, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley became commercial banks, subjecting themselves to more stringent regulation. With the exception of Lehman, these companies required or received government support.[69] Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two U.S. Government sponsored enterprises, owned or guaranteed nearly $5 trillion in mortgage obligations at the time they were placed into conservatorship by the U.S. government in September 2008.[70][71]These seven entities were highly leveraged and had $9 trillion in debt or guarantee obligations, an enormous concentration of risk, yet were not subject to the same regulation as depository banks.[edit]Financial innovation and complexity A protester on Wall Street in the wake of the AIG bonus payments controversy is interviewed by news media.The term financial innovation refers to the ongoing development of financial products designed to achieve particular client objectives, such as offsetting a particular risk exposure (such as the default of a borrower) or to assist with obtaining financing. Examples pertinent to this crisis included: the adjustable-rate mortgage; the bundling of subprime mortgages into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) or collateralized debt obligations (CDO) for sale to investors, a type of securitization; and a form of credit insurance calledcredit default swaps(CDS). The usage of these products expanded dramatically in the years leading up to the crisis. These products vary in complexity and the ease with which they can be valued on the books of financial institutions.[edit]Credit RatingsIn a Peabody Award winning program, NPR correspondents argued that a "Giant Pool of Money" (represented by $70 trillion in worldwide fixed income investments) sought higher yields than those offered by U.S. Treasury bonds early in the decade. Further, this pool of money had roughly doubled in size from 2000 to 2007, yet the supply of relatively safe, income generating investments had not grown as fast. Investment banks on Wall Street answered this demand with the MBS and CDO, which were assigned safe ratings by the credit rating agencies. In effect, Wall Street connected this pool of money to the mortgage market in the U.S., with enormous fees accruing to those throughout the mortgage supply chain, from the mortgage broker selling the loans, to small banks that funded the brokers, to the giant investment banks behind them. By approximately 2003, the supply of mortgages originated at traditional lending standards had been exhausted. However, continued strong demand for MBS and CDO began to drive down lending standards, as long as mortgages could still be sold along the supply chain. Eventually, this speculative bubble proved unsustainable.[72]The CDO in particular enabled financial institutions to obtain investor funds to finance subprime and other lending, extending or increasing the housing bubble and generating large fees. A CDO essentially places cash payments from multiple mortgages or other debt obligations into a single pool, from which the cash is allocated to specific securities in a priority sequence. Those securities obtaining cash first received investment-grade ratings from rating agencies. Lower priority securities received cash thereafter, with lower credit ratings but theoretically a higher rate of return on the amount invested.[73][74]For a variety of reasons, market participants did not accurately measure the risk inherent with this innovation or understand its impact on the overall stability of the financial system.[75] For example, the pricing model for CDOs clearly did not reflect the level of risk they introduced into the system. The average recovery rate for "high quality" CDOs has been approximately 32 cents on the dollar, while the recovery rate for mezzanine CDO's has been approximately five cents for every dollar. These massive, practically unthinkable, losses have dramatically impacted the balance sheets of banks across the globe, leaving them with very little capital to continue operations.[76]Another example relates to AIG, which insured obligations of various financial institutions through the usage of credit default swaps. The basic CDS transaction involved AIG receiving a premium in exchange for a promise to pay money to party A in the event party B defaulted. However, AIG did not have the financial strength to support its many CDS commitments as the crisis progressed and was taken over by the government in September 2008. U.S. taxpayers provided over $180 billion in government support to AIG during 2008 and early 2009, through which the money flowed to various counterparties to CDS transactions, including many large global financial institutions.[77][78]The limitations of a widely-used financial model also were not properly understood.[79][80] This formula assumed that the price of CDS was correlated with and could predict the correct price of mortgage backed securities. Because it was highly tractable, it rapidly came to be used by a huge percentage of CDO and CDS investors, issuers, and rating agencies.[80] According to one wired.com article[80]: "Then the model fell apart. Cracks started appearing early on, when financial markets began behaving in ways that users of Li's formula hadn't expected. The cracks became full-fledged canyons in 2008—when ruptures in the financial system's foundation swallowed up trillions of dollars and put the survival of the global banking system in serious peril... Li's Gaussian copula formula will go down in history as instrumental in causing the unfathomable losses that brought the world financial system to its knees."As financial assets became more and more complex, and harder and harder to value, investors were reassured by the fact that both the international bond rating agencies and bank regulators, who came to rely on them, accepted as valid some complex mathematical models which theoretically showed the risks were much smaller than they actually proved to be in practice [81]. George Soros commented that "The super-boom got out of hand when the new products became so complicated that the authorities could no longer calculate the risks and started relying on the risk management methods of the banks themselves. Similarly, the rating agencies relied on the information provided by the originators of synthetic products. It was a shocking abdication of responsibility." [82]Certain financial innovation may also have the effect of circumventing regulations, such as off-balance sheet financing that affects the leverage or capital cushion reported by major banks. For example, Martin Wolf wrote in June 2009: "...an enormous part of what banks did in the early part of this decade – the off-balance-sheet vehicles, the derivatives and the 'shadow banking system' itself – was to find a way round regulation."[83][edit]Boom and collapse of the shadow banking systemIn a June 2008 speech, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then President and CEO of the NY Federal Reserve Bank, placed significant blame for the freezing of credit markets on a "run" on the entities in the "parallel" banking system, also called the shadow banking system. These entities became critical to the credit markets underpinning the financial system, but were not subject to the same regulatory controls. Further, these entities were vulnerable because they borrowed short-term in liquid markets to purchase long-term, illiquid and risky assets. This meant that disruptions in credit markets would make them subject to rapid deleveraging, selling their long-term assets at depressed prices. He described the significance of these entities: "In early 2007, asset-backed commercial paper conduits, in structured investment vehicles, in auction-rate preferred securities, tender option bonds and variable rate demand notes, had a combined asset size of roughly $2.2 trillion. Assets financed overnight in triparty repo grew to $2.5 trillion. Assets held in hedge funds grew to roughly $1.8 trillion. The combined balance sheets of the then five major investment banks totaled $4 trillion. In comparison, the total assets of the top five bank holding companies in the United States at that point were just over $6 trillion, and total assets of the entire banking system were about $10 trillion." He stated that the "combined effect of these factors was a financial system vulnerable to self-reinforcing asset price and credit cycles."[12]Nobel laureate Paul Krugman described the run on the shadow banking system as the "core of what happened" to cause the crisis. "As the shadow banking system expanded to rival or even surpass conventional banking in importance, politicians and government officials should have realized that they were re-creating the kind of financial vulnerability that made the Great Depression possible—and they should have responded by extending regulations and the financial safety net to cover these new institutions. Influential figures should have proclaimed a simple rule: anything that does what a bank does, anything that has to be rescued in crises the way banks are, should be regulated like a bank." He referred to this lack of controls as "malign neglect."[58]

Predatory lendingPredatory lending refers to the practice of unscrupulous lenders, to enter into "unsafe" or "unsound" secured loans for inappropriate purposes.[49] A classic bait-and-switch method was used by Countrywide, advertising low interest rates for home refinancing. Such loans were written into extensively detailed contracts, and swapped for more expensive loan products on the day of closing. Whereas the advertisement might state that 1% or 1.5% interest would be charged, the consumer would be put into an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) in which the interest charged would be greater than the amount of interest paid. This created negative amortization, which the credit consumer might not notice until long after the loan transaction had been consummated.Countrywide, sued by California Attorney General Jerry Brown for "Unfair Business Practices" and "False Advertising" was making high cost mortgages "to homeowners with weak credit, adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) that allowed homeowners to make interest-only payments."[50]. When housing prices decreased, homeowners in ARMs then had little incentive to pay their monthly payments, since their home equity had disappeared. This caused Countrywide's financial condition to deteriorate, ultimately resulting in a decision by the Office of Thrift Supervision to seize the lender.Countrywide, according to Republican Lawmakers, had involved itself in making low-cost loans to politicians, for purposes of gaining political favors.[51].Former employees from Ameriquest, which was United States's leading wholesale lender,[52] described a system in which they were pushed to falsify mortgage documents and then sell the mortgages to Wall Street banks eager to make fast profits.[52] There is growing evidence that such mortgage frauds may be a cause of the crisis.[52][edit]DeregulationFurther information: Government policies and the subprime mortgage crisisCritics have argued that the regulatory framework did not keep pace with financial innovation, such as the increasing importance of the shadow banking system, derivatives and off-balance sheet financing. In other cases, laws were changed or enforcement weakened in parts of the financial system. Key examples include: In October 1982, President Ronald Reagan signed into Law the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act, which began the process of Banking deregulation that helped contribute to the savings and loan crises of the late 80's/early 90's, and the financial crises of 2007-2009. President Reagan stated at the signing, "all in all, I think we hit the jackpot".[53] In November 1999, President Bill Clinton signed into Law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. This repeal has been criticized for reducing the separation between commercial banks (which traditionally had a conservative culture) and investment banks (which had a more risk-taking culture).[54][55] In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission relaxed the net capital rule, which enabled investment banks to substantially increase the level of debt they were taking on, fueling the growth in mortgage-backed securities supporting subprime mortgages. The SEC has conceded that self-regulation of investment banks contributed to the crisis.[56][57] Financial institutions in the shadow banking system are not subject to the same regulation as depository banks, allowing them to assume additional debt obligations relative to their financial cushion or capital base.[58] This was the case despite the Long-Term Capital Management debacle in 1998, where a highly-leveraged shadow institution failed with systemic implications. Regulators and accounting standard-setters allowed depository banks such as Citigroup to move significant amounts of assets and liabilities off-balance sheet into complex legal entities called structured investment vehicles, masking the weakness of the capital base of the firm or degree of leverage or risk taken. One news agency estimated that the top four U.S. banks will have to return between $500 billion and $1 trillion to their balance sheets during 2009.[59] This increased uncertainty during the crisis regarding the financial position of the major banks.[60] Off-balance sheet entities were also used by Enron as part of the scandal that brought down that company in 2001.[61] As early as 1997, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan fought to keep the derivatives market unregulated.[62] With the advice of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets,[63] the U.S. Congress and President allowed the self-regulation of the over-the-counter derivatives market when they enacted the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Derivatives such as credit default swaps (CDS) can be used to hedge or speculate against particular credit risks. The volume of CDS outstanding increased 100-fold from 1998 to 2008, with estimates of the debt covered by CDS contracts, as of November 2008, ranging from US$33 to $47 trillion. Total over-the-counter (OTC) derivative notional value rose to $683 trillion by June 2008.[64] Warren Buffett famously referred to derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction" in early 2003.[65][66]

Easy credit conditionsFrom 2000 to 2003, the Federal Reserve lowered the federal funds rate target from 6.5% to 1.0%.[25] This was done to soften the effects of the collapse of the dot-com bubble and of the September 2001 terrorist attacks, and to combat the perceived risk of deflation.[26] The Fed then raised the Fed funds rate significantly between July 2004 and July 2006.[27] This contributed to an increase in 1-year and 5-year adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) rates, making ARM interest rate resets more expensive for homeowners.[28] This may have also contributed to the deflating of the housing bubble, as asset prices generally move inversely to interest rates and it became riskier to speculate in housing.[29][30] U.S. Current Account or Trade DeficitIn 2005, Ben Bernanke addressed the implications of the USA's high and rising current account (trade) deficit, resulting from USA imports exceeding its exports.[31] Between 1996 and 2004, the USA current account deficit increased by $650 billion, from 1.5% to 5.8% of GDP. Financing these deficits required the USA to borrow large sums from abroad, much of it from countries running trade surpluses, mainly the emerging economies in Asia and oil-exporting nations. The balance of payments identity requires that a country (such as the USA) running a current account deficit also have a capital account (investment) surplus of the same amount. Hence large and growing amounts of foreign funds (capital) flowed into the USA to finance its imports. This created demand for various types of financial assets, raising the prices of those assets while lowering interest rates. Foreign investors had these funds to lend, either because they had very high personal savings rates (as high as 40% in China), or because of high oil prices. Bernanke referred to this as a "saving glut."[32] A "flood" of funds (capital or liquidity) reached the USA financial markets. Foreign governments supplied funds by purchasing USA Treasury bonds and thus avoided much of the direct impact of the crisis. USA households, on the other hand, used funds borrowed from foreigners to finance consumption or to bid up the prices of housing and financial assets. Financial institutions invested foreign funds in mortgage-backed securities. USA housing and financial assets dramatically declined in value after the housing bubble burst.[33][34][edit]Sub-prime lending U.S. Subprime lending expanded dramatically 2004-2006In addition to easy credit conditions, there is evidence that both government and competitive pressures contributed to an increase in the amount of subprime lending during the years preceding the crisis. Major U.S. investment banks and government sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae[dubious – discuss] played an important role in the expansion of higher-risk lending.[35][36]The term subprime refers to the credit quality of particular borrowers, who have weakened credit histories and a greater risk of loan default than prime borrowers.[37] The value of U.S. subprime mortgages was estimated at $1.3 trillion as of March 2007,[38] with over 7.5 million first-lien subprime mortgages outstanding.[39]Subprime mortgages remained below 10% of all mortgage originations until 2004, when they spiked to nearly 20% and remained there through the 2005-2006 peak of the United States housing bubble.[40] A proximate event to this increase was the April 2004 decision by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to relax the net capital rule, which encouraged the largest five investment banks to dramatically increase their financial leverage and aggressively expand their issuance of mortgage-backed securities. This applied additional competitive pressure to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which further expanded their riskier lending.[41] Subprime mortgage payment delinquency rates remained in the 10-15% range from 1998 to 2006[42], then began to increase rapidly, rising to 25% by early 2008.[43][44]Some, like American Enterprise Institute fellow Peter J. Wallison[45], believe the roots of the crisis can be traced directly to sub-prime lending by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are government sponsored entities. On 30 September 1999, The New York Times reported that the Clinton Administration pushed for sub-prime lending: "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people...In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s."[46]In 1995, the administration also tinkered with President Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 by regulating and strengthening the anti-redlining procedures. The result was a push by the administration for greater investment, by financial institutions, into riskier loans. A 2000 United States Department of the Treasury study of lending trends for 305 cities from 1993 to 1998 showed that $467 billion of mortgage credit poured out of CRA-covered lenders into low and mid level income borrowers and neighborhoods.[47]Others have pointed out that there were not enough of these loans made to cause a crisis of this magnitude. In an article in Portfolio Magazine,Michael Lewis spoke with one trader who noted that "There weren’t enough Americans with [bad] credit taking out [bad loans] to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product." Essentially, investment banks and hedge funds used financial innovation to synthesize more loans using derivatives. "They were creating [loans] out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That’s why the losses are so much greater than the loans."[48]

Background and causesThe immediate cause or trigger of the crisis was the bursting of the United States housing bubble which peaked in approximately 2005–2006.[6][7] High default rates on "subprime" and adjustable rate mortgages (ARM), began to increase quickly thereafter. An increase in loan incentives such as easy initial terms and a long-term trend of rising housing prices had encouraged borrowers to assume difficult mortgages in the belief they would be able to quickly refinance at more favorable terms. However, once interest rates began to rise and housing prices started to drop moderately in 2006–2007 in many parts of the U.S., refinancing became more difficult. Defaults and foreclosure activity increased dramatically as easy initial terms expired, home prices failed to go up as anticipated, and ARM interest rates reset higher. Share in GDP of U.S. financial sector since 1860.[8]In the years leading up to the start of the crisis in 2007, significant amounts of foreign money flowed into the U.S. from fast-growing economies in Asia and oil-producing countries. This inflow of funds made it easier for the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates in the United States too low (by the Taylor rule) from 2002–2006 which contributed to easy credit conditions, leading to the United States housing bubble. Loans of various types (e.g., mortgage, credit card, and auto) were easy to obtain and consumers assumed an unprecedented debt load.[9][10] As part of the housing and credit booms, the amount of financial agreements called mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which derive their value from mortgage payments and housing prices, greatly increased. Such financial innovation enabled institutions and investors around the world to invest in the U.S. housing market. As housing prices declined, major global financial institutions that had borrowed and invested heavily in subprime MBS reported significant losses. Falling prices also resulted in homes worth less than the mortgage loan, providing a financial incentive to enter foreclosure. The ongoing foreclosure epidemic that began in late 2006 in the U.S. continues to drain wealth from consumers and erodes the financial strength of banking institutions. Defaults and losses on other loan types also increased significantly as the crisis expanded from the housing market to other parts of the economy. Total losses are estimated in the trillions of U.S. dollars globally.[11]While the housing and credit bubbles built, a series of factors caused the financial system to both expand and become increasingly fragile. Policymakers did not recognize the increasingly important role played by financial institutions such as investment banks and hedge funds, also known as the shadow banking system. Some experts believe these institutions had become as important as commercial (depository) banks in providing credit to the U.S. economy, but they were not subject to the same regulations.[12] These institutions as well as certain regulated banks had also assumed significant debt burdens while providing the loans described above and did not have a financial cushion sufficient to absorb large loan defaults or MBS losses.[13] These losses impacted the ability of financial institutions to lend, slowing economic activity. Concerns regarding the stability of key financial institutions drove central banks to provide funds to encourage lending and restore faith in thecommercial paper markets, which are integral to funding business operations. Governments also bailed out key financial institutions and implemented economic stimulus programs, assuming significant additional financial commitments.[edit]Growth of the housing bubbleMain article: United States housing bubbleBetween 1997 and 2006, the price of the typical American house increased by 124%.[14] During the two decades ending in 2001, the national median home price ranged from 2.9 to 3.1 times median household income. This ratio rose to 4.0 in 2004, and 4.6 in 2006.[15] This housing bubble resulted in quite a few homeowners refinancing their homes at lower interest rates, or financing consumer spending by taking out second mortgages secured by the price appreciation.Free cash used by consumers from home equity extraction doubled from $627 billion in 2001 to $1,428 billion in 2005 as the housing bubble built, a total of nearly $5 trillion dollars over the period, contributing to economic growth worldwide.[16][17][18] U.S. home mortgage debt relative to GDP increased from an average of 46% during the 1990s to 73% during 2008, reaching $10.5 trillion.[19]By September 2008, average U.S. housing prices had declined by over 20% from their mid-2006 peak.[20][21] Easy credit, and a belief that house prices would continue to appreciate, had encouraged many subprime borrowers to obtain adjustable-rate mortgages.[dubious – discuss]These mortgages enticed borrowers with a below market interest rate for some predetermined period, followed by market interest rates for the remainder of the mortgage's term. Borrowers who could not make the higher payments once the initial grace period ended would try to refinance their mortgages. Refinancing became more difficult, once house prices began to decline in many parts of the USA. Borrowers who found themselves unable to escape higher monthly payments by refinancing began to default. During 2007, lenders had begun foreclosure proceedings on nearly 1.3 million properties, a 79% increase over 2006.[22] This increased to 2.3 million in 2008, an 81% increase vs. 2007.[23]As of August 2008, 9.2% of all mortgages outstanding were either delinquent or in foreclosure.[24]

• 1 Background and causeso 1.1 Growth of the housing bubbleo 1.2 Easy credit conditionso 1.3 Sub-prime lendingo 1.4 Predatory lendingo 1.5 Deregulationo 1.6 Increased debt burden or over-leveragingo 1.7 Financial innovation and complexityo 1.8 Credit Ratingso 1.9 Boom and collapse of the shadow banking systemo 1.10 Commodity bubbleo 1.11 Systemic crisiso 1.12 Role of economic forecasting• 2 Financial markets impactso 2.1 Impacts on financial institutionso 2.2 Credit markets and the shadow banking systemo 2.3 Wealth effectso 2.4 Global contagion• 3 Effects on the global economyo 3.1 Global effectso 3.2 U.S. economic effectso 3.3 Official economic projections• 4 Responses to financial crisiso 4.1 Emergency and short-term responseso 4.2 Regulatory proposals and long-term responses• 5 See also• 6 References• 7 External links and further reading

Financial crisis of 2007–2009From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. WikiProject Economics or theEconomics Portal may be able to help recruit one. (September 2009)
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on thetalk page. Its neutrality is disputed. Tagged since July 2009. It may contain original research or unverifiable claims. Tagged since July 2009. It may not present a worldwide view of the subject. Tagged since July 2009. Its tone or style may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. Tagged since July 2009. It may require general cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Tagged since July 2009.This article is about background financial market events dating from July 2007. For an overview of all economic problems during the late 2000s, see Late 2000s recession.Part of a series on:2007–2009 financial crisisMajor dimensions[show]
By country[hide] Belgium Iceland Ireland Latvia Russia Spain
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v • d • e
The financial crisis of 2007–2009 has been called the worst financial crisis since the one related to the Great Depression by leading economists,[1] and it contributed to the failure of key businesses, declines in consumer wealth estimated in the trillions of U.S. dollars, substantial financial commitments incurred by governments, and a significant decline in economic activity.[2] Many causes have been proposed, with varying weight assigned by experts.[3] Both market-based and regulatory solutions have been implemented or are under consideration,[4] while significant risks remain for the world economy.[5]

Outside AsiaAfter the Asian crisis, international investors were reluctant to lend to developing countries, leading to economic slowdowns in developing countries in many parts of the world. The powerful negative shock also sharply reduced the price of oil, which reached a low of $8 per barreltowards the end of 1998, causing a financial pinch in OPEC nations and other oil exporters. This reduction in oil revenue contributed to the 1998 Russian financial crisis, which in turn caused Long-Term Capital Management in the United States to collapse after losing $4.6 billion in 4 months. A wider collapse in the financial markets was avoided when Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York organized a $3.625 billion bail-out. Major emerging economies Brazil and Argentina also fell into crisis in the late 1990s (see Argentine debt crisis).[35]The crisis in general was part of a global backlash against the Washington Consensus and institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, which simultaneously became unpopular in developed countries following the rise of the anti-globalization movement in 1999. Four major rounds of world trade talks since the crisis, in Seattle, Doha, Cancún, and Hong Kong, have failed to produce a significant agreement as developing countries have become more assertive, and nations are increasingly turning toward regional or bilateral FTAs (Free Trade Agreements) as an alternative to global institutions. Many nations learned from this, and quickly built up foreign exchange reserves as a hedge against attacks, including Japan, China, South Korea. Pan Asian currency swaps were introduced in the event of another crisis. However, interestingly enough, such nations as Brazil, Russia, and India as well as most of East Asia began copying the Japanese model of weakening their currencies, restructuring their economies so as to create a current account surplus to build large foreign currency reserves. This has led to an ever increasing funding for US treasury bonds, allowing or aiding housing (in 2001–2005) and stock asset bubbles (in 1996–2000) to develop in the United States.[edit]See also Financial crisis Financial contagion List of finance topics[edit]Notes1. ^ Kaufman: pp. 195–62. ^ http://www.adb.org/Documents/Books/Key_Indicators/2003/pdf/rt29.pdf3. ^ Pempel: pp 118–1434. ^ The Myth of Asia's Miracle A Cautionary Fable by Paul Krugman.5. ^ Hughes, Helen. Crony Capitalism and the East Asian Currency Financial 'Crises'. Policy. Spring 1999.6. ^ Blustein: p. 737. ^ The Three Routes to Financial Crises: The Need for Capital Controls. Gabriel Palma (Cambridge University). Center for Economic Policy Analysis. November 2000.8. ^ Bernard Eccleston, Michael Dawson, Deborah J. McNamara (1998). The Asia-Pacific Profile. Routledge (UK). ISBN 0415172799.9. ^ FIRE-SALE FDI by Paul Krugman.10. ^ Stiglitz: pp. 12–1611. ^ Joint Comminuque The 30th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) The Thirtieth ASEAN Ministerial Meeting was held in Subang Jaya, Malaysia from 24 to 25 July 1997.12. ^ Halloran, Richard. China's Decisive Role in the Asian Financial Crisis. Global Beat Issue Brief No. 24. 27 January 1998.13. ^ Noland: pp. 98–10314. ^ a b IMF's Role in the Asian Financial Crisis by Walden Bello.15. ^ The IMF Crisis Editorial. Wall Street Journal. 15 April 1998.16. ^ http://www.columbia.edu/cu/thai/html/financial97_98.html17. ^ Kaufman: pp. 193–818. ^ Liebhold, David. Thailand's Scapegoat? Battling extradition over charges of embezzlement, a financier says he's the fall guy for the 1997 financial crash. TIME.com. 27 December 1999.19. ^ Pressure from below: Supporters of the new, improved Constitution now have to help turn words into action 10 October 199720. ^ "Japan Stocks Slide Again On Fears About Stability". Wall Street Journal Online. 26 December 1997. Retrieved 2 September 2009.21. ^ http://www.oanda.com/convert/fxhistory August 13 = 2673; August 14 = 2790; August 15 = 2900; August 31 = 2930; October 31 = 3640; December 31 = 5535. Accessed 2009-08-20. Archived 2009-09-04.22. ^ http://www.oanda.com/convert/fxhistory January 31 = 10,100; March 31 = 8,650; May 31 = 11,350; July 31 = 13,250; September 30 = 10,800. Accessed 2009-08-20. Archived 2009-09-04.23. ^ Bayani Cruz, We will hold on to blue-chip shares: Tsang, The Standard, 29 August 1998.24. ^ The CIA World Factbook - Malaysia25. ^ Ngian Kee Jin: p. 1226. ^ Pettis: pp. 55–6027. ^ Pettis: p. 7928. ^ Tiwari: pp. 1–329. ^ a b http://www.adb.org/Documents/Books/Key_Indicators/2001/rt11_ki2001.xls30. ^ a b Cheetham, R. 1998. Asia Crisis. Paper presented at conference, U.S.-ASEAN-Japan policy Dialogue. School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, June 7–9, Washington, D.C.31. ^ Radelet: pp. 5–632. ^ The Asian financial crisis ten years later: assessing the past and looking to the future. Janet L. Yellen. Speech to the Asia Society of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, 6 February 200733. ^ Kilgour, Andrea (1999). The changing economic situation in Vietnam: A product of the Asian crisis?34. ^ Weisbrot: p. 635. ^ The Crash transcript. PBS Frontline.[edit]References