Your Ad Here

The sunken Enterprise

Posted by muhammad.shafqat On April - 24 - 2009

.

Though nobody really knows how the world economic crisis is going to end but one thing is for sure that’ future historians would draw parallels between the current credit crisis with that of the Great Depression’ as there lies extreme analogies between the two. The last pour was the outcome of the First World War and set into motion the Second, just like today’s GWOT’ and changed on its way the realm of economic philosophical thinking and theories that governed the world’ while founding the specter of paradigm for Global Financial System’ whose reign lasted for 80 long years. Just like exceptional growth in the era starting off 2000’ Great Depression also dressed up under the windfall of splendid wealth and strikingly’ both triggered from the collapse of mortgage industry’ resulted in a Domino crumple of Banking and Insurance sectors that lead to today’s calls of sundering the two’ sounding very similar to Steagall Act of last century.

Economies work in a loop’ a closed cycle and its very intriguing that after having sniffed through all the ebb we haven’t yet learned its very bible! The world as we see today ignore and forgets every thing ‘critical might that be’ the moment it deluges into the Nova of pro tempore fringes. Call this greed, passion, ignorance or madness, but the fact remains that’ droves of such aspirations ruined this world over and over again. Shall we learn or should we learn’ sounds ineffectual and abortive without shedding light on causes’ those been botched and forgotten.

The Fed Chairman accuses saving spree of East’ being the prolific ground of fall of the West! But this is just a small fraction of the whole story. Regulators on the western coast foresaw this rising tsunami charging right in their direction and instead of reinforcements they made levies go thin rather melt’ despite incontrovertible evidence of the havoc it shrouded in its seemingly placate torso…and we saw it come, wreak, devastate and level what ever surfaced in its chase. Excessive glut attenuated the interest rates and flooded credit quality with high volatility’ thus ruining and deforming the plinth of global financial solvency. This whole specter of easy-credit got flared up under the shadows of extravagant demand both on the government and public level, catalyzed by the milieu of tampered and manipulated regulations. The sunken tower of yields and gains was already swaying vigorously under the unsustainable winds, but instead of bracing the very foundations’ callous voraciousness and stupendous irresponsibility made this structure go gangling. A fractional hike in Fed interest rate was the trigger that unleashed the unforeseen demolition, making the “statue of recklessness” fall and fall hard. But all the tremors and terminations of century old institutions of the likes of Lehmans and AIGs were just the tip of iceberg, the captain and crew of the struggling Titanic are still not sure of the extent of damage underneath, they are scuffling to save the sinking giant.

The great spill has already ruined the lush interior while devouring it’s the most priciest assets, the team in order to lighten the mammoth of toxic burden has already shifted, unloaded or destroyed tonnage of its ruptured engines. The cost of saving onboard assets has shot to a whooping Eight Trillion, still no effort seems effective enough to bud the great leak. Just a simple loitering has soaked up Fifty Trillion out of the global stock and equity market’ yet prognostication of even greater spoilage looms with blatant conspicuousness. The ripples of this seizure have already jostled shores of the entire world, but would this world come to rescue of struggling Captain and how would they trail the plunging sail? Is yet to be seen. Once out of the tumult’ would the debilitated enterprise be capable of steering the armada of nations or would others be willing to follow the fractured lead?

Muhammad Shafqat

Mar 2009

Economic contagion’ the Death spread

Posted by muhammad.shafqat On April - 24 - 2009

.

The Great Depression gave the Second World War and the preceding Bretton Woods, thus set the foundations for a global financial system that lasted 20 short of a Century, until it broke down to child the Depression of 21st Century. Whether this would also lead to wars is not known, but how it is going to alter the panorama of world financial architecture is being seen with great contemplation’ with vast changes bound to alter the realm of economic theories, institutional structures, global architecture of integration and concurrence and the philosophical outlook.

World has been towing the lines and reaping benefits form the promulgation of Neo-Classical theory, a sharp contrast form the Great Depression, that now stands as a failed adventure. The crash has swallowed almost all the gains that the booming decade of growth, wealth and well being gave to the people of this world and ramshackle the once roaring juggernauts by pushing them into retreat, isolation and dire help. Thus arising from the very free market wisdom, the US and EU fallen back again to the Gold Standard, marred with deflation. This was the failure of theory that gave an inducement to Keynesian economics, the notion under which Governments use Fiscal policies to stimulate growth and confidence when monetary measure fail to promulgate gains.

Looking at the Global horizon one can see the conflicting zones of Surplus and Deficit economies (former excessive savings is reasoned to be the cause of low interest rates, the case of massive liquidity and thus an impetus for degenerated credit quality) Thus a vicious cycle of money being poured by the tech adopting, exploding economies into deficit black holes (US being importer of Foreign Capital at $4 billion per day), giving rise to high corporate savings which were unable to balance out the surging deficits, thus leading to a severe Global capital Imbalance. Clearly deficits on such massive scales are unsustainable, since the collapse an estimated $27 trillion has been wiped out of the Global stock market, 40% This crisis undoubtedly is the result of human excesses, it’s an event tough not separate but the preceding reforms, restructuring, and reallocation and realignment is a continuous process that should not get stopped. It tends to make us focus an think of different facades of disruptive trends generated over the years through a very short window of opportunity that lasts until the pain, but soon as it closes so does the resurgence of vested interests that again takes the reformed body over to seep and infect, paving ways for the next paralysis.

Derivates carry in them leverage that harbors risks, and risks get transferred but do not diminish. Problem is the lack of understanding about the very nature of derivates; it is essentially the representation of basal assets those are linked through leverage. Their forms are only bound by imaginations, as it can take up any shape, thus higher the shapes (as happened in the US with the rise of CDS market) more complex its relation with the underlying platform becomes making its pyramid dynamically more profitable but at the same time even more risky. Such that is the underlying assets become troubled, the whole pyramid begins to crumble. And it is this instability in finance that it should be heavily guarded with regulations’ but as happened in US where the whole derivate paradigm was let to swing with the market forces with no regulated frame work to support. Yes the forces acted and made it grow tall enough to shiver and fragment on its own splintery base’ thus smashing it down with others’ on all…

Muhammad Shafqat

Feb 2009