Global Markets Are Partying Like It Is 2008 (But a Crash Is Coming)
Global Markets Are Partying Like It Is 2008 (But a Crash Is Coming)
Author: Desmond Lachman
The Bank for International Settlements keeps warning us, global asset and credit market prices have once again risen well above their underlying value—in other words, they are in bubble territory. In addition, as our health experts keep warning us, we still have to get through a dark coronavirus winter before a sufficient part of the population has been vaccinated to allow a return to economic normality.
In late 2008, at a meeting with academics at the London School of Economics, Queen Elizabeth II asked why no one seemed to have anticipated the world’s worst financial crisis in the postwar period. The so-called Great Economic Recession, which had begun in late 2008 and would run until mid-2009, was set off by the sudden collapse of sky-high prices for housing and other assets—something that is obvious in retrospect but that, nevertheless, no one seemed to see coming.
Considering the virtual silence among economists about the danger today’s bubbles pose and about the risk of another leg down in the global economy, one has to wonder whether in a year or two, when the bubbles eventually do burst, the queen will not be asking the same sort of question.
This silence is all the more surprising considering how much more pervasive bubbles are now and how much more indebted the world economy is today than it was twelve years ago. While in 2008, the bubbles were largely confined to the American housing and credit markets, they are now to be found in almost every corner of the world economy. Indeed, U.S. stock market valuations today are reminiscent of those preceding the 1929 market crash while countries with major solvency problems like Italy, Spain, and Portugal all find themselves able to borrow at zero interest rates.
The President of the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD), Vuk Jeremić delivered a lecture at ADA University, Azerbaijan’s top-tier educational institution entitled "Geopolitics of the Balkans and How it Relates to the Caucasus”.
Read more
Vuk Jeremić lectures at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna
At the invitation of the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna, one of the most prestigious and oldest schools on the European continent, CIRSD President Vuk Jeremić delivered a lecture entitled “(Geo)politics of the Balkans: The Revenge of History”, on February 7th, 2023.
Read more
Prof. Sachs: “Sanctions against Russia ineffective and contrary to international law”
CIRSD had the privilege to host one of the world’s brightest minds and most famous economists – Prof. Dr Jeffrey Sachs in a live discussion titled "The winter of Our Discontent".
Read more
Central Asia: The Age of Reform
The Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD) co-organized a conference on December 7, 2022, titled “Central Asia: The Age of Reform” at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, one of the most prestigious and oldest (1754) schools in Europe.
Read more