New economic crisis in 2011?

Analysis: World poorly placed to meet new economic crisis - Yahoo! News

 

With financial markets in turmoil and economic growth slowing, policymakers around the world may once again be forced to cooperate to try to head off a crisis, as they did successfully in 2008-2009. But this time, they have fewer good options.

Central banks have less room to ease monetary policy than they did three years ago; cash-strapped governments cannot afford to boost spending as much; and political disarray in some countries may make concerted global policymaking harder.

"What can you do? On monetary policy, clearly no one agrees with anyone. On fiscal policy, everyone is blocked," said Deutsche Bank economist Gilles Moec.

By some measures, the global situation is not nearly as bad as it was in 2008. Banks have strengthened themselves since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the world is still far from a recession; JPMorgan may have cut its forecast for 2012 U.S. growth this week but it still expects an expansion of 1 percent.

Global stocks have dropped nearly 10 percent in the last month but MSCI's world equity index is still 90 percent above its 2009 low.

"I know people are saying that this feels very much like 2008 but I don't think we are there. In 2008, you could point at the problem in the banking sector and there were failed banks," said Nomura economist Jens Sondergaard.

Still, the trends have clearly turned negative. National purchasing managers indexes around the world have dropped near or below the "boom or bust" threshold separating economic growth from contraction. This week's slide of British government bond yields to record lows underlines both investor nervousness and a grim growth outlook.

In some ways, the situation is more worrying than it was in 2008: There is widespread concern about the risk of a downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating, and a bond market attack on Italy, the euro zone's third-biggest economy, has called into question the long-term viability of the zone. Valuations of U.S. and European bank shares are back around levels hit at the time of Lehman's collapse.