The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century

Attachment

The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century.pdf

11l47htns-k1/b0bsl79jx59rwtw7lr978psshbdk7tsxlb1w4wlpmfhprmt/The_First_Global_Financial_Crisis_of_the_21st_Century.pdf

Description

This book (200+ pages) is a selection of VoxEU.org columns that deal with the subprime crisis. VoxEU.org is a portal for research-based policy analysis and commentary written by leading economists. It was launched in June 2007 with the aim of enriching the economic policy debate by making it easier for serious researchers to contribute and to make their contributions more accessible to the public.

The subprime crisis, which boiled over in August 2007, was the perfect showcase for Vox’s unique approach. Mainstream media’s explanations of it as a liquidity crisis did not seem to fit the facts. How could a few deadbeat homeowners in the United States bring down a German Landesbank, force a restructuring on a major French bank, and compel the Fed and the European Central Bank (ECB) to undertake emergency injections of cash? The story was surely deeper than a standard-issue credit problem.

Starting on 13 August 2007, Vox posted a slew of columns by economists who really knew what they were talking about and were willing to explain the crisis in terms that any trained economist could understand. Mainstream media’s limits (800 words written for the average newspaper reader) just did not work for an event of this complexity. Vox provided commentators with the space to explain the situation using standard economic terminology. It raised the level of the public debate and this attracted researchers who had also been at the cutting edge of policy-making, such as: Willem Buiter (professor at LSE and former member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee), Steve Cecchetti (professor at Brandeis University and former Executive Vice President and Director of Research at the New York Fed), Charles Wyplosz (professor at the Graduate Institute, Geneva and adviser to central banks), Marco Onado (professor at Bocconi and former Commissioner of the Italian public authority responsible for regulating the Italian securities market, CONSOB), Tito Boeri (professor at Bocconi and editor of LaVoce) and Luigi Spaventa (professor in Rome and former Chairman of CONSOB).

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The Centre is pluralist and non-partisan, bringing economic research to bear on the analysis of medium- and long-run policy questions. CEPR research may include views on policy, but the Executive Committee of the Centre does not give prior review to its publications, and the Centre takes no institutional policy positions. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and not those of the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

 

Author

Edited by Andrew Felton and Carmen Reinhart. June 2008. Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). London. UK