the next financial crisis

There seems to be increasing concern among economists, journalists and politicians that another severe financial crisis could be looming in the next few years. Of course, the next recession, war or disaster is inevitable and to be expected at some point. The question is how resilient or panic-prone our financial system is when something inevitably happens.

Axios suggests that as advanced economies raise interest rates, they could force debt-laden emerging markets into situations where they can’t afford interest payments. Turkey is of particular concern, and owes large amounts of money to European countries. A trade war is also a concern.

Nouriel Roubini gives ten reasons why a severe financial crisis may be coming, starting with interest rates being too low to give countries any chance to react to a crisis by lowering them (which is probably why they are trying to gradually raise them in the first place.) He also mentions poor (or no) U.S. policies towards trade, immigration, and infrastructure, and high-speed trading algorithms.

Jeffrey Frankel, a professor at Harvard, argues that U.S. policy is unnecessarily pro-cyclical in in terms of expanded government spending, lowered taxes, reduced capital requirements for banks, and political criticism of the Federal Reserve.

Let’s hope a consensus among the experts is actually a contrarian indicator.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *