The financial crisis has caused an economic crisis around the world.
Drastic state measures have prevented the collapse of the economic system: governments have established rescue funds for failing banks or nationalized banks for relaunching economic growth. At the same time, central banks have intervened with important injections of liquidity and have lowered interest rates.
Bio
Ziya Akkurt
Ziya Akkurt joined Akbank in 1996 as Head of the Corporate Banking Department and was promoted as Executive Vice President in 1997. In 2008, Akkurt was appointed General Manager of AKInvestment, elected Deputy CEO in charge of the Corporate and Commercial Banking Business Units at Akbank in April 2009 and appointed Chief Executive Officer in June 2009.
Before joining Akbank, Ziya Akkurt held managerial positions at various commercial banks including Osmanlı Bank and Banqué Paribas/Paris. Ziya Akkurt is a graduate of Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences.
Stephan Klapproth
Stephan Klapproth has been the Anchorman of Swiss National Television's "Ten O'Clock News" program since 1993. He also regularly covers main news events all over the world.
As a moderator, he has interviewed many heads of government, ministers, CEO and celebrities - especially so during the World Economic Forum WEF held annually in Davos/Switzerland.
Christine Lagarde
Christine Lagarde is the Minister of Economy of the Industry and Employment of France.
She also is a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum.
Patrick Odier
Patrick Odier holds an economics degree from the University of Geneva and an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago. He joined Lombard Odier & Cie in 1982 and completed his training in Zurich, New York and Montreal, before becoming a Managing Partner in 1986. He has been Senior Partner of Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch & Cie Group since July 1, 2008.
Patrick Odier is a board member of several Swiss and international academic institutions and non-profit organizations. He has been Chairman of the Swiss Bankers Association since September 17, 2009, and is also Vice-Chairman of economiesuisse (the Swiss federation of trade and industry).
Nikolaus Schneider
Nikolaus Schneider is the Vice-Chairperson of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany.
Juan Somavia
Juan Somavia was elected to serve as the ninth Director-General of the ILO by the Governing Body on March 23, 1998. His five-year term of office began on March 4, 1999, when he became the first representative from the Southern hemisphere to head the Organization.
In March 2003, Mr. Somavia was re-elected for a second five-year term, and for a third term on November 18, 2008.
Joseph E. Stiglitz
Joseph E. Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University and the chair of the university's Committee on Global Thought. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information. He was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under Clinton and later the chief economist for the World Bank. His latest book is Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy.
Downward trend in the business cycle characterized by a decline in production and employment, which in turn lowers household income and spending. Even though not all households and businesses experience actual declines in income, they become less certain about the future and consequently delay making large purchases or investments. Consumers buy fewer durable household goods, and businesses are less likely to purchase machinery and equipment and more likely to use up existing inventory instead of adding goods to their stock. This drop in demand leads to a corresponding fall in output and thus worsens the economic situation. Whether a recession develops into a severe and prolonged depression depends on a number of circumstances. Among them are the extent and quality of credit extended during the previous period of prosperity, the amount of speculation permitted, the ability of government monetary and fiscal policies to reverse (or minimize) the downward trend, and the amount of excess productive capacity. Comparedepression.
It is nonsense that somehow the US government forced mortgage lenders to make loans to borrowers who were not credit worthy and that this caused the crisis. Yet in spite of all the evidence to the contrary and plain common sense, this misleading myth continues in the right-wing media and blogs.
To mention just a few pieces of evidence:
The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was enacted to stop redlining. It did not force banks to make loans to anyone. Rather, it required them to apply the same criteria for mortgages-- such as income, credit score, assets, and debt servicing ability--to people in all the neighborhoods where they had banks. If someone was not credit worthy, these banks were unlikely to give them a mortgage.
The initial wave of foreclosures was not in the lower income and minority neighborhoods covered by the CRA but rather suburban, middle class communities and condos.
Most of the sub-prime loans were not originated by banks covered by the CRA. Rather, they were made by mortgage companies. Few if any of the mortgage originators that went bankrupt were covered by the CRA.
The CRA started in 1977. Why was there no mortgage/housing crisis in urban areas for 30 years?
How could the CRA have caused this mess when many other countries have gone through a similar housing boom and bust?
To blame the government for all of this is to be willfully blind to what really happened. The government was at fault for not having the will/courage/ability to regulate but the underlying cause clearly lay within a largely unregulated private sector.
i see..so there is a mortage broker running after poor people, selling them a mortage which they are not going to repay (because of the increasing interest rates/no job = NINJA & Sub Prime Mortages) just because the mortage broker can sell his shit and his risk to wall street banks. So that's step 1, the mortage broker only wants to sell as many as mortages as possible. He bears no risk..so who cares about the quality.
The wallstreet banks bundle the mortages in MBS's, they pay the rating agencies to play the game along (if not FORCE them to play along)giving every product a AAA rating. After that the banks sell the AAA MBS's getting rid of their risk as well. So the banks also didn't care about the quality of the shit they were producing. So the mortage broker, the wallstreet bank and the rating agencies were all players in the same orgy. The whole game drove up the prices, until the bubble bursted.
There is no central coordination needed for such irrational rationality. The coordination is done by the $ and the ability to sell the risk. Wallstreetbanks are just like parrots. Like the CEO of CIT said: As long as the music plays you have to get up and dance, and the music is still playing. At Lehman they were short and long at the same time on the housingmarket as the bursting moment approached. One department was shorting and the other was trying to sell as much MBS's as possible.
At the end of the chain are the buyers of such products who were, obviously not aware of the risk they were taking. The MBS got a AAA rating so everything seemed ok to them.....
They got screwed by the wallstreetbanks and the rating agencies....
The invisible hand was never applicable to the financial markets. That's the BIG misinterpretation.
Stieglitz dismisses Adam Smith's "invisible hand" after mis-interpreting it, and then acts as if the real hand of the US government is invisible. He says that they made risky loans to unqualified individuals but ignores that it was government policy. It is hard to believe that all these bankers could have acted with such coordination without central organization. And they had it in the form of FNMA and Freddie Mac and the redevelopment program. Barney Frank was a predatory lender.
It is time to stop talking about governments role in the economy as if governments create economies. It is quite the other way around.
member. 
