Word: globality
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...economy is slowing from its blistering pace of late 1997 and early 1998, when growth rates ranged between 3.0% and 5.5% annually, and the sag is virtually certain to continue into next year. Given the continuing spread of the global financial crisis, from which the U.S. can no longer stay immune, "there must be a big slowdown," says Allen Sinai, chief global economist of Primark Decision Economics, a major forecasting firm. And next year, if the board's majority opinion is correct, the slowdown should cross the line into a growth recession. That is usually defined as a continuing increase...
Sinai is most worried by "a very intense and unprecedented global credit crunch and balance-sheet contraction" that seems to be getting steadily worse. He runs down a kind of box score: nine of 13 countries on the Pacific Rim of Asia that once accounted for a third of world output "are in depression or recession, and we're still counting"; Japan, the world's second biggest economy, "is still going down--it looks like a drop of 2% this year"; in Latin America, Venezuela and Colombia are in recession and Brazil is "in a very dicey situation," saddled with...
Russia's ruble devaluation and debt default were not especially damaging in broad economic terms; the Russian economy is no bigger, measured by gross domestic product, than that of the Netherlands. But the Russian default and devaluation were devastating financially and psychologically. They reinforced the impulse of global investors to pull their capital out of any country where they sense the slightest risk. Sinai explains that because of Russia's thousands of nuclear weapons, many considered its economy too important to be allowed to fail. Yet it did collapse, and investors drew a bitter lesson: in theory any country could...
...global downward spiral "should serve as a lightning rod to world policymakers--yet it really hasn't," complains Roach. But what can they do? The International Monetary Fund has exhausted its ability to keep acting as a global lender of last resort, in large measure because the U.S. Congress has failed to pass appropriations to refill its coffers. President Clinton has asked Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to set up a meeting with their counterparts in 22 countries, stirring some hopeful talk of a coordinated cut in global interest rates. But Greenspan promptly denied that any such move...
...manipulated the system so cleverly that he earns $22,000 a month--twice the salary of the country's President--while teachers earn as little as $70 a month. Brazil was able to finance that kind of waste when foreign capital was pouring in. But now, with the global financial crisis sucking hundreds of millions of dollars out of Brazil each day, the Joy Train, whose payrolls burn up a surreal 70% of all public revenue, threatens to pull the nation over a cliff...