The International Monetary Fund has warned the world’s economy is at risk of another massive financial crisis. The IMF cited the failure of governments to protect the system from reckless behavior and initiate reforms to prevent the coming onslaught while others see the global debt as the main concern.
Of course, it isn’t just the failure to regulate under threats of violence causing the problem, since governments will not regulate their own spending habits. Global debts, both national and private will be a major cause for concern that should not be overlooked.
According to the Guardian, global debt levels are well above those at the time of the last crash in 2008. Because of the high levels of debt across the board, the risk remains that parts of the financial system could trigger a global panic, the Washington-based lender of last resort said. Rising interest rates could very well usher in a crash.
Much has been done to shore up the reserves of banks in the last 10 years and to put in place more rigorous oversight of the financial sector, but “risks tend to rise during good times, such as the current period of low interest rates and subdued volatility, and those risks can always migrate to new areas”, the IMF said adding, “supervisors must remain vigilant to these unfolding events.” The growth of global banks such as JP Morgan and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to a scale beyond that seen in 2008, leading to fears that they remain “too big fail”, also registers on the IMF’s radar.
The former UK prime minister Gordon Brown said last month that the world economy was “sleepwalking into a future crisis;” and risks were not being tackled now “we are in a leaderless world”.
Speaking this week before the fund’s forthcoming annual meeting – taking place next week on the Indonesian island of Bali – the IMF’s head, Christine Lagarde said she was concerned that the total value of global debt, in both the public and private sectors, has rocketed by 60% in the decade since the financial crisis to reach an all-time high of $182tn (£139tn). –The Guardian
The problem seems to always come back to the high levels of global debt, which cannot be fixed by governments as many suggest because they themselves are quickly contributing to the suicide of the U.S.
Once upon a time, at least members of the Tea Party would stand up and say something, but these days nobody seems to care that America’s future is being systematically destroyed. Republicans have been in control of both houses of Congress, but our debt problems just continue to get worse and worse. And the truth is that the budgets that have been passed since Donald Trump became president are simply slightly revised Obama budgets. The Republicans have allowed the Democrats to have their way time after time, and it has been absolutely disgusting to watch.
In 8 of the past 11 fiscal years, the U.S. national debt has risen by more than a trillion dollars, and the U.S. national debt is now sitting at an all-time record high of 21.52 trillion dollars.
What we are doing is literally insane, and if we want our nation to survive we must change course immediately. –Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse
Lagarde said that the build-up of global government debts made developing world governments and companies more vulnerable to higher US interest rates, which could trigger a flight of funds and destabilize their economies. “This should serve as a wake-up call,” she said.
In a separate analysis, as part of the IMF’s annual economic outlook, it warned that “large challenges loom for the global economy to prevent a second Great Depression.”
