Finance

A look at the large role the trade deficit of the United States has played since the 1980s.

The failure of Lehman Brothers on 15 September 2008 marked the beginning of the end of the world’s love affair with financialization.

What can emerging economies learn from the financial meltdown in advanced economies?

With the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, a crisis in part driven by derivatives on subprime mortgages, a seemingly obscure sector of the financial market help fuel the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

what have we learned from the crisis and what should we have learned?

Simon Johnson, Professor at MIT and former chief economist of the IMF, calls for much higher capital requirements for big banks.

How could reputable ratings agencies – and investment banks – misjudge things so badly?

Five years after the collapse of the U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, the world has still not addressed the fundamental cause of the subsequent financial crisis – an excess of debt. And that is why economic recovery has progressed much more slowly than anyone expected (in some countries, it has not come at all).

What have we learned about the American political economy from the crisis and its aftermath?

What happens when professionals lose touch with the people they’re supposed to serve?

Let Them Eat Credit: Has Financial Capitalism Failed the World?

Can China lead the way on innovation?

Every nation faces the challenge of imagining what a good life means. Sound nutrition, shelter, health care, personal safety, social stability, security of savings, clean air and water, and the development of children are among the elements of what many envision as vital to a happy and healthy society.

The global financial cycle has transformed the well-known trilemma into a ‘dilemma’. Independent monetary policies are possible if and only if the capital account is managed directly or indirectly. This column argues the right policies to deal with the ‘dilemma’ should aim at curbing excessive leverage and credit growth. A combination of macroprudential policies guided by aggressive stress‐testing and tougher leverage ratios are needed. Some capital controls may also be useful.

We are coming up to the fifth anniversary of the Lehman crash in September 2008. How bad was it? Have we fixed the problems?