The Way Out of the Global Financial Crisis Essay Example

The Way Out of the Global Financial Crisis Essay The global recession is the cause for this, and that is a generally accepted fact. Not only the business contraction, but also the increases in unemployment and shrinking government revenues are also newsworthy. However, it is accepted that, large economies have started recovering from the crisis, unemployment is a problem that has been solved yet, (Nanto, 2009). Numerous banks and individual households still face problems in restoring their balance sheets.As a definite remedy, industrialized as well as emerging economies (developing countries) constitute financial rescue packages such as, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P. L. 111-5), (Nanto, 2009). This note details about one of the fundamental dilemmas which discussed all over the world at present. Simply stated, this is the world economic crisis, which is also known as the world financial crisis which began in the latter part of 2007. More specifically, this was known as many economists to be the worst economic cri sis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.Mainly, the collapses of large corporate and countries, as well as downturns in economies in economic growth, increasing unemployment, and collapses of the trade can be highlighted as the fundamental causes for the crisis. Given that, many large economies have turned into chaos as an awful repercussion of the crisis. However, many economists as well as countries as whole addressed remedies to prevent those so called negative repercussions; it is a generally accepted fact that, those remedies were not totally successful.This note discusses the above addressed issue in detail. Thus, we structured this note elaborating the notion of World Economic Crisis at the outset, and we postulates some of the major corporate collapses in the world. Thereafter, we detail about the major downturns of the economic growth as well as high unemployment problems occurred as causes for the core discussion. More focally, we develop facts about the impacts of the crisis toward the Sri Lankan economic and the financial sector as well.Finally, we strive to postulate, the feasibility of the remedies addressed to the phenomenon (Global Economic Crisis) discussed and we build an argument with a critical justification where, â€Å"there is no way Sri Lanka can keep away from the effects of economic recession but certainly the authorities could think and act sensibly towards finding ways of minimizing the impact by adopting proper policies. Most of all, the important thing is to adopt proactive policies†. Introduction – The Global Economic CrisisIn this section we intend to talk about how the world economic crisis emerged and some of the major players in this crisis. Perhaps most notably, this section does not encompass all the incidents about the crisis; we bring out the most important aspects to develop the core argument of the note. Many are suggesting that the major cause or the trigger for the financial crisis is the United Stat es housing bubble which peaked in the periods of 2005-2006. In the early 2006, housing prices peaked and started to decline in 2006 and 2007, and reached new lows in 2012.Adding to that on December 30th, 2008 Case-Shiller home price index reported its largest price drop in its history (See figure 01, annexes: Median and Average Sales Prices of New Homes Sold in United States 1963-2008). As a repercussion, the mortgage house pricing was also started gradually rising. To economists, it all seems painfully simple. Especially in Asian countries, more focally from China foreign money started flowing to the United States. This scenario was allowed people to borrow more and more properties that could not affordable.This is mainly due to the availability of free flow of money. Thereafter, bankers tend to bundle up in terms of loans and sold to investors. Obviously these investors did not understand the inherent risk of these bundles of money. Further, some and the majority of the investors tend to start defaulting on their mortgage payments, and they lost their houses and investors all around the world, including banks and hedge funds, lost their investments. Government of the US was not able to regulate the activities of the banking behemoths as well.Further weak and fraudulent underwriting practices of corporate are also vulnerable to the economy at that time. When we are discussing with the phases of the crisis, basically, there are four basic phases in the process of coping with the crisis by countries across the globe, (Nanto, 2009). First step details to contain the contagion and restore confidence of the system. Secondly, it can be suggested to coping with secondary effects of the crisis. The third phase of this process is to make changes in the financial system to reduce risk and prevent future crises.The fourth phase of the process is dealing with political, social, and security effects of the financial turmoil. The global economic crisis, which is also known as the financial crisis, (Nanto, 2009) started quickly spreading to emerging economies as well. Investors started pulling investments capital from countries, even those investments are with small quantities they perceived a high risk, consequently, plunging started in the value of stock as well as domestic currencies. Also, export prices started gradually declining with a dramatic slow of the economic growth. Major corporate bankruptcies and country collapsesIn this section, we expect to detail about the importance of prediction of financial distress as well as some of the major corporate as well as country collapses followed by the global economic crisis. Perhaps most notably, we are compiling about financial distress, because the improper financial prediction has become a major cause for corporate collapses. Actually, the notion of bankruptcy prediction models started way back in 1930s in terms of ratio analysis and it has evolved into various methodological grounds as well, (Bel lovary et al. , 2007). Moreover, given the importance of predicting financial distress, Campbell et al. (2011) write, ‘Although probably quite accurate, it may not be useful to predict a heart attack with a person clutching their hand to their chest’ (p. 02) The above empirical justification elaborates us the importance of predicting and implementing precautionary actions in advance for a problematic situation. Likewise, better prediction of corporate failures gives an utmost importance. Having a brief introduction about the financial distress and bankruptcy prediction, following discussion provide somewhat a detailed elaboration pertaining to the corporate and country collapses.At the outset, it can be stated that, the majority is not concerned about the excessive executive compensation which is also played pivotal role for the global financial crisis. Wall Street became a magnet for the brightest Americans who wanted to make a large amount of money very quickly. Most companies rewarded short-term performance without much regard for market fundamentals and long-term earnings. Executives were given stock options, which they could manipulate to earn more money. The more an executive could drive up his or her company’s stock price or its earnings per share, the more money he or she would get.Frank Partnoy argues that a mercenary culture developed among corporate executives. They merged with or acquired higher-growth companies and, in many cases, committed accounting fraud. This fraud led to the bankruptcy of companies such as Enron, Global Crossing, and WorldCom. Many executives received long prison sentences. Enron Corporation was an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy in late 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 and was one of the world’s leading electricity, natural gas, pulp and paper, and communications companies, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion in 2000.For six consecutive years Enron was named as the â€Å"America’s Most Innovative Company†. At the end of 2001 it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained substantially by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known as the â€Å"Enron scandal†. The Enron scandal, revealed in October 2001, eventually led to the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation, the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, which was one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world.In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in American history at that time, Enron undoubtedly is the biggest audit failure. Global Crossing is an American telecommunications company based in Bermuda, providing computer networking services throughout the world. It maintains a large backbone and offers transit and peering links, VPN, leased lines, audio and video conferencing, long distance telephone, managed services, dialup, colocation and VoIP, to custome rs ranging from individuals to large enterprises and to other carriers.The result of this bankruptcy was said to be the loss of 9000 jobs. WorldCom’s bankruptcy filing in 2002 was the largest such filing in U. S. history. The WorldCom scandal is regarded as one of the worst corporate crimes in history, and several former executives involved in the fraud faced criminal charges for their involvement. Most notably, company founder and former CEO Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and former CFO Scott Sullivan received a five-year jail sentence, which would have been longer had he not pleaded guilty and testified against Ebbers.Rising unemployment It is a generally accepted fact that, as a result of the economic downturn, millions of workers have been laid off from companies, at the same time, many of them experienced in cut working hours, and enterprises were seeking to reduce wages and other employee benefits constantly. Although there is some evidence that the global economy has reached a trough, history shows that synchronized and global crises, like the current one, result in recessions that are more severe and longer in duration (International Monetary Fund (IMF), 2009).These ongoing destructions of jobs increasing jobless hours started ensuring unemployment rates across the world. Particularly these downturns affected severely to many parties in the economy as well. More focally, those segments were defined in terms of age and gender, (Verick, 2009). Due to the lack of skills possessed, work experience, job search abilities, and the financial resources to find employment were considered as problems associated with the youth in marginalizing the labor market, (Verick, 2009). As a remedy the youth tend to employed with contract employments.More specifically, youth employment rates are far more sensitive than the adult population in the business cycle, (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2008). Indeed, since the end of 2007, an additional 2. 1 million young men and 1 million young women have become unemployed in a large sample of countries considered in this paper consisting of most European countries, Australia, Canada and the United States, which together represent almost 60 per cent of the global economy. Over this period, the unemployment rate in the European Union member countries increased by 6. and 3. 5 percentage points for young men and women, respectively, while it raised by a lower margin for prime age men (2. 1 percentage points). In the United States, unemployment rates have surged by a greater amount, especially for young men. Downturns in economies in economic growth and collapses of the trade To elaborate this section in more focus, we intend to adopt findings from Reinhart et al. , (2008) studies. We adopted, Past and Ongoing Real House Price Cycles and Banking Crises (see figure 02, annexes).Thus, we begin, at the outset, many of the dominat countires in the globe faci ng banking crisis. Particularly, countires like, Austria, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Ongoing crisis are in dark shading and the past crisis are in the light shading in the figure. The most severe real housing price declines were experienced by Finland, the Philippines, Colombia and Hong Kong. Notably, the duration of housing price declines is quite long-lived, averaging roughly six years. This simple illustration depicts the vulnerabilities facing by the top economies at present and faced in the past.Thus, we can postulate that, above mentioned United States housing bubble which peaked in the periods of 2005-2006 has significant impacts on the respective country’s economy as a whole. And it corresponds with long lasting vulnerabilities as well. Impact on Asian Countries and Sri Lanka Particularly, Asian policy changes in recent years including Japan’s banking reforms, Korea’s opening of its financial market, China’s dramatic economic transformation, so on and so forth elaborates us the Asian region corresponds with vulnerabilities of the Global Crisis.Thus, we state that if dominant Asian countries get affected from the crisis, a developing country like Sri Lanka will no longer be able to escape from the vulnerabilities. Also, the impacts will depend varying the sectors of the country. For example, there will be less tourist arrivals from European countries and that will affect the all ready troubled sector. Rising interest rates and inflationary pressure, US dollar appreciating at the expense of the rupee coupled with a war budget and high public sector expenditure will make things difficult for Sri Lanka.Central Bank (CBSL) released more than US$ 22 million into the market in order to defend the rupee. Less and less dollars coming into the market causes pressure on the rupee thus making it difficult for the (CBSL) to defend the rupee, (Weerakkody, 2008). The way out of the crisis Given all the reperc ussions, causes and effects of the global crisis, in a nutshell, we strive to postulate that, as a country, we cannot avoid the negative consequences overnight. For an example, Sri Lanka’s textile and garment exports will adversely impact due to the continuation US and the Eurozone economic downturn.This is because, nearly half of the textile is exported to the US in 2007 meantime another, 45 percent was exported to the Eurozone. In fact, this sector contributes substantially high proportion to the foreign exchange earnings in Sri Lanka. As a definite remedy we suggest opening Treasury Bills and Bonds to the Sri Lankans and implementing precautionary actions with friendly central banks in terms of SWAP agreements would be vital decisions to be made. Adding to that, prudent policies also indispensable as a country to implement, these are important to minimize the impacts of external shocks on the domestic financial market.Further, stable interest rates maintenance is also impo rtant in this regard and implementation of actions on undisciplined lending by banks pays a greater emphasis. Finally, we conclude stating that, In every probability, there is no way Sri Lanka can keep away from the effects of economic recession but certainly the authorities could think and act sensibly towards finding ways of minimizing the impact by adopting proper policies. Most of all, the important thing is to adopt proactive policies. Works Cited Bellovary, J. , Giacomino, D. amp; Akers, M. 2007. A review of bankruptcy prediction studies: 1930 to present. Journal of Financial Education, 33. Campbell, J. Y. , Hilscher, J. amp; Szilagyi, J. , 2011. Predicting financial distress and the performance of distressed stocks. Journal of Investment Management, 9(2), pp. 1-21. International Monetary Fund (IMF), 2009. From recession to recovery: how soon and how strong? Chapter 3 in IMF. World Economic Outlook (WEO) Crisis and Recovery, Washington, D. C.. Nanto, D. K. , 2009. The Global F inancial Crisis: Analysis and Policy Implications. Online] Congressional Research Service Available at: www. crs. gov [Accessed 01 May 2013]. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2008. OECD Employment Outlook. OECD, Paris. Reinhart, Carmen, M. , Kenneth, S. amp; Rogoff, 2008. Is the 2007 U. S. Subprime Crisis So Different? An International Historical Comparison. American Economic Review, 98(2), pp. 339–44. Verick, S. , 2009. Who Is Hit Hardest during a Financial Crisis? The Vulnerability of Young Men and Women to Unemployment in an Economic Downturn. Institute for the Study of Labor, IZA DP No. 359. Weerakkody, D. I. , 2008. Global financial crisis and Sri Lanka. [Online] Available at: http://www. dailynews. lk/2008/10/13/bus27. asp [Accessed 1 May 2013]. Annex 01: Figure one: Median and Average Sales Prices of New Homes Sold in United States 1963-2008 Source: Wikipedia, Financial crisis of 2007–2008 Annex 02 Past and Ongoing Real House Price Cycles and Banking Crises: Peak-to-trough Price Declines (left panel) and Years Duration of Downturn (right panel) Source: Reinhart, Carmen, M. , Kenneth, S. amp; Rogoff, 2008. Is the 2007 U. S. Subprime Crisis So Different?An International Historical Comparison. American Economic Review, 98(2), pp. 339–44. [ 2 ]. The United States housing bubble is an economic bubble affecting many parts of the United States housing market in over half of American states. [ 3 ]. Case-Shiller Home Price Indices monitors and evaluates the house price indices for the United States. [ 4 ]. The process by which investment bankers raise investment capital from investors on behalf of corporations and governments that are issuing securities (both equity and debt) [ 5 ].Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City [ 6 ]. Frank Partnoy is the George E. Barrett Professor of Law and Finance at the University of San Diego School of Law. [ 7 ]. This type of organizational culture is char acterized by a low degree of sociability and a high degree of solidarity. [ 8 ]. A swap is a derivative in which counterparties exchange cash flows of one partys financial instrument for those of the other partys financial instrument.