Word: happening
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...virtually unregulated atmosphere that national governments couldn't manage to police. Sarkozy and his European partners hope that the Nov. 15 summit can come up with a scheme of common rules governing global finance - with the IMF possibly acting as the world regulator. Not everyone is optimistic that will happen...
...Elysée officials say it's impossible to know what a congress of nearly 20 national leaders will yield. "The fact that President Bush agreed to the summit is, in our view, a very significant development in itself," says Sarkozy spokesman Franck Louvrier. "As to exactly what will happen, it's too soon to know." So much for Sarkozy's swagger in insisting on major revision to aspects of the 1944 Bretton Woods treaty."Europe wants it," he said. "Europe demands it. Europe will get it." But observers suggest what emerges may not be exactly what Europe...
...Should that happen, the IMF could be given a new function as a "permanent secretariat" overseeing finance markets for G7 and other major countries, Buiter says. That's rather a far cry from Sarkozy's appeal to reinvent capitalism - or even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's call to reform the international financial system around "the agreed principles of transparency, integrity, responsibility, good housekeeping and co-operation across borders." Yet many observers say that even a partial move away from the reckless lack of oversight that enabled the current crisis would constitute progress...
...like John Mack, CEO of Morgan Stanley, talk of reducing their leverage to a ratio of 12 to 1 - a regulatory requirement, now that both Morgan and Goldman have turned themselves into commercial rather than investment banks - as if there were some button they could push to make it happen. But the truth is that for U.S. banks, reducing their use of debt and rebuilding their devastated balance sheets is a long and painful process. Deleveraging is part of what creates a credit crunch: institutions that have been hammered by the decline in real estate prices will be making fewer...
...different from--and tougher than--some previous ones. That's because the financial crisis is taking place at the same time as a real estate downturn, a conjunction that is unusual; in the past, one has often followed the other, but it's rare for them to happen simultaneously. And the problems are being exacerbated by an explosion of household debt in Britain. Buoyed by rising property prices, households ratcheted up their borrowing to a massive 173% of disposable income, vs. 106% in 1995. That's way above even that paragon of profligacy, the U.S., where household debt amounts...