Boom, Bust, and Recovery in the World Economy
This global economic crisis will go down in history as Greenspan’s Folly, made possible by easy money and financial deregulation from the mid-1990’s until today. But, whatever the pain felt in the deregulated Anglo-Saxon-style economies, a global depression, or even recession, is not inevitable, given room for growth in many other parts of the world.
NEW YORK – This global economic crisis will go down in history as Greenspan’s Folly. This is a crisis made mainly by the United States Federal Reserve Board during the period of easy money and financial deregulation from the mid-1990’s until today.
This easy-money policy, backed by regulators who failed to regulate, created unprecedented housing and consumer credit bubbles in the US and other countries, notably those that shared America’s policy orientation. The bubble has now burst, and these economies are heading into a steep recession.
At the core of the crisis was the run-up in housing and stock prices, which were way out of line with historical benchmarks. Greenspan stoked two bubbles – the Internet bubble of 1998-2001 and the subsequent housing bubble that is now bursting. In both cases, increases in asset values led US households to think that they had become vastly wealthier, tempting them into a massive increase in their borrowing and spending – for houses, automobiles, and other consumer durables.