& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

RECESSION

From US home-loan defaults to global economic debacle

AFP, Paris
A year-long crisis is shaking the foundations of some of the world’s mightiest financial bodies and economies, confounding policymakers who now confront an increasingly fragile and uncertain future.
The financial market turmoil that emerged last August as the US housing bubble burst has collided with a surge in energy and food prices along with a toxic combination in the United States and Europe of tepid growth and rising inflation.
The crisis erupted August 9, 2007 when French bank BNP suspended three of its funds, causing short-term credit markets to freeze up and prompting the European Central Bank to inject 95 billion euros into money markets.
Today, with consumer and business confidence crumbling, governments and central bankers are scrambling to confect measures -- official bailouts, tax rebates, lower interest rates, credit injections -- to snuff out a perplexing array of economic brush fires that include a threat of recession.
"This crisis is different -- a once or twice a century event deeply routed in fears of insolvency of major financial institutions," former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan wrote in a column for the Financial Times on Tuesday.
While many economists maintain that the broader economy can - with difficulty -- weather the storm on the markets, there is a strong fear that the global financial architecture remains vulnerable to more upheaval. Initial suggestions that emerging markets
would be unscathed are giving way to evidence of global slowdown.
"One year later it's getting worse and worse," said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University professor a for mer chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.
"There's a lot more restructuring ahead in the financial sector and the global economy has a lot of adjustments to make to the commodities shock."
In the past year fabled financial titans such as banks Merrill Lynch,
JPMorgan Chase, Bear Stearns, UBS and Deutsche Bank, as well as the two US mortgage financing behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have all been stung. Some emergency recapitalisations have opened opportunities for
investors from emerging markets.
The US housing meltdown was brought on by years of a cheap mongage credit that left many homeowners facing huge debt they were unable to refinance when real estate prices began to fall.
A subsequent flood of foreclosures undermined the value of billions of dollars in mongage-backed assets held by the banks, triggering staggering losses and writedowns on the their balance sheets.
The IMF has estimated that banks and financial institutions have written off more than 400 billion dollars on mortgage-related investments and have sustained losses of 945 bil- ► lion dollars.
In such a climate, the banks in turn have grown markedly less willing to make loans among themselves and to businesses, prompting a worldwide squeeze on credit.
All this in a context of longstanding global imbalances and dollar weakness arising largely from US deficits that economists had long warned would unwind, possibly with vicious corrections.
The IMF in an assessment last month of financial stability, found that "global financial markets continue to be fragile and indicators of systemic risk remain elevated."
A crisis that began with a wave of mortgage foreclosures by subprime -or high-risk -- US borrowers has spread to other forms of credit, it said.
Greenspan has said the bloodletting will end "when home prices stabilise and with them the value of equity in homes supporting troubled mortgages.”