英语论文网

Reflections on a Year of Crisis
By the standards of recent decades, the economic environment at the time of thissymposium one year ago was quite challenging. A year after the onset of the www.51lunwen.orgcurrentcrisis in August 2007, financial markets remained stressed, the economy was slowing,and inflation--driven by a global commodity boom--had risensignificantly. What wecould not fully appreciate when we last gathered here was that the economic andpolicy environment was about to become vastly more difficult. In the weeks thatfollowed, several systemically critical financial institutions wouldeither fail or comeclose to failure, activity in some key financial markets would virtually cease, and theglobal economy would enter a deep recession. My remarks this morning will focus onthe extraordinary financial and economic events of the past year, as well as on the
policy responses both in the United States and abroad.
One very clear lesson of the past year--no surprise, of course, to any student ofeconomic history, but worth noting nonetheless--is that a full-blown financial crisis canexact an enormous toll in both human and economic terms. A second lesson--onceagain, familiar to economic historians--is that financial disruptions do not respectborders. The crisis has been global, with no major country having been immune.
History is full of examples in which the policy responses to financial crises have been
slow and inadequate, often resulting ultimately in greater economic damage and
increased fiscal costs. In this episode, by contrast, policymakers in the United States
and around the globe responded with speed and force to arrest a rapidly deteriorating
and dangerous situation. Looking forward, we must urgently address structural
weaknesses in the financial system, in particular in the regulatory framework, to
ensure that the enormous costs of the past two years will not be borne again.
September-October 2008: The Crisis Intensifies
When we met last year, financial markets and the economy were continuing to sufferthe effects of the ongoing crisis. We know now that the National Bureau of Economic
Research has determined December 2007 as the beginning of the recession. TheU.S. unemployment rate had risen to 5-3/4 percent by July, about 1 percentage pointabove its level at the beginning of the crisis, and household spending was weakening.Ongoing declines in residential construction and house prices and rising mortgagedefaults and foreclosures continued to weigh on the U.S. economy, and forecasts ofprospective credit losses at financial institutions both here and abroad continued toincrease. Indeed, one of the nation's largest thrift institutions, IndyMac, had recentlycollapsed under the weight of distressed mortgages, and investors continued to harbor
doubts about the condition of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) FannieMae and Freddie Mac, despite the approval by the Congressof open-ended supportfor the two firms.
Notwithstanding these significant concerns, however, there was little to suggest thatmarket participants saw the financial situation as about to take a sharp turn for theworse. For example, although indicators of default risk such as interest rate spreadsand quotes on credit default swaps remained well above historical norms, most suchmeasures had declined from earlier peaks, in some cases by substantial amounts.
And in early September, when the target for the federal funds rate was