On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 11:51 AM, xponentrob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The other problem, one that is often overlooked over here, is that this > situation is basically occurring worldwide. As should be quite clear by now, all global markets are linked. Supply and demand knows no national boundaries. The "credit crisis" and drop in stock markets occurred worldwide. It is not hard to see how artificially increasing the demand for housing in the US can have global effects. Besides the low interest rates which contributed to the increased demand, and which are obviously a global phenomenon, US politicians do not have an exclusive on bad policy decisions. > a more likely place to look for the origin of this disaster is multinationals. Certainly plenty of non-US corporations invested in securities and bonds which were directly or indirectly backed by the US housing market. Some of them were lending money to FNM and FRE, which were obviously overleveraged at the time. But it was not such a dumb investment as it sounds, since the creditors of Fannie and Freddie assumed that the risk of default on their loans was small, because the US government would step in and bail out the bondholders. And they were right. Thus US government interference encouraged excessive lending worldwide. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
