Along with drastic tax reductions, almost all nations have resorted to an expansive fiscal and a loose financial policy over the past four months to tackle the global financial crisis that broke out in the US. However, the global economic situation has not turned better as expected and the crisis continues to exert a deepening impact on the global economy. Thus, it is particularly important at this time that all countries should reach an extensive consensus on the cause of the ongoing financial tsunami and then gauge their macroeconomic policies. It is regrettable to see a responsibility-evading attitude from the United States, the epicenter of the global financial crisis.
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently accused China and other emerging economies of kindling the global crisis, saying that their long-term high bank deposits have caused a serious imbalance in the global economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke even attributed the bubble in the US property market to China's high saving ratio.
From a financial and economic perspective, the ongoing financial crisis is a combination of securities and banking problems in the US. After the outbreak of the US subprime mortgage crisis in August 2007, the securities market in the world's largest economy got stuck in a disorder and its stock- and bond-dependent financing means came to standstill. The New York Stock Exchange did not issue new stocks for 10 consecutive weeks.
Since last October, the number of new shares issued in the bourses of Frankfurt, London, Paris and Tokyo has also suffered a drastic decline. As a result, funds-thirsty enterprises are deprived of financing channels, which hindered their new business development and expansion plans. Also, no country can find new growth points to bolster its economy. That is why the global economy is still in slump even four months since the outbreak of the financial crisis.
The 10-year-long vigor the US economy enjoyed in the 1990s should be attributed to the large-scale inflow of global funds to the largest economy. The "Star Wars" program launched by the Reagan administration in the 1980s greatly boosted the development of new technologies in the US, thus attracting large volumes of worldwide funds in pursuit of profit-yielding technological dividends.
Such kinds of capital movement have helped form a global capital circulation with New York as the center and dollar as the main currency. Also, since the "Big Bang" in the British financial system, Washington has replaced London as the dominant player in leading the financial globalization and liberalization process and then succeeded in developing New York into the center of global capital and fund concentration.
The large-scale inflow of international capital greatly beefed up US capital capability and thus contributed to the formation of the country's dominant status in the global capital market.