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Though today's financial crisis began in the world's richest nation, there is good reason to worry about how it will affect the world's poor. A recent series of posts explores the implications. The contagions of freeze-up and slowdown will spread through many channels: trade, investment, migration, and more.
IMF and Participants at the upcoming meetings of the IMF and World Bank in early October are bound to promise with considerable conviction an increase and an improvement in international coordination of domestic financial regulators -- just as U.S. Treasury and Fed officials are now promising, with considerable conviction, to revisit and reform the rules and the coordination of a currently fragmented regulatory set-up within the U.S.
Few analysts think that we’ll escape from the financial crisis without a recession, and top power industry executives have wasted no time in spinning the implications for carbon emissions regulation in the US.
I have been following the lively exchanges begun by Liliana Rojas-Suarez’s post on the development impacts of the U.S. financial crisis, especially Michael Clemens's provocative post and Nora Lustig’s thoughtful reply.
I am afraid I disagree rather strongly with Michael Clemens argument that the current financial crisis will matter little to long term growth and thus to global poverty.
I think the behavior of both public officials and private sector managers over the past decade is at direct odds with our message to the developing world regarding transparency and accountability. For example, my research shows that influence peddling is a serious impediment to growth in Africa, and that the development community needs to devise solutions that recognize and overcome such problems.
If the worst happens, all bets are off; otherwise I expect the "macrofinance" convulsions will have minimal repercussions for microfinance. In Indonesia during its crisis in 1997, while large companies and rich people defaulted left and right, the 2.6 million microcredit borrowers of the Bank Rakyat Indonesia hardly skipped a beat. And few at this point are predicting that the U.S. seize-up will trigger a recurrence of such severe economic trauma for developing countries.
When you’re done reading today’s news stories about the crisis, take a deep breath. Media coverage is focused on the very short term, as usual. Speculation abounds that we live in a different world now. I’m reminded of portentous claims after the Asian Financial Crisis that “the miracle was over”, claims which look very overwrought in hindsight. In historical perspective, many of the most worrisome recent crises are small bumps on a very long road.
As with all financial disasters -- whether it's your neighbor’s lost job or a macroeconomic shock -- the first thing people want to know is "will it hit me?" This question must be on the minds of ordinary people and macroeconomic policymakers across the world, including those in developing countries. The policymaker's answer will depend on two things: (1) how closely is her country integrated in the international financial markets; and (2) how vigilant have her country's regulators been in regulating and supervising its capital markets?
Among the likely but unanticipated consequences of the U.S. financial crisis: AIDS treatment jobs could become a "safe haven" for people whose current employment depends on foreign assistance funds that are currently expended for other purposes.
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