Comment, analysis and other offerings from Wednesday’s FT,
Opinion: Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him
The FT’s Martin Wolf writes:A hyperpower’s place is in the wrong. This is particularly true when, as last week at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the hyperpower in question is barely represented, at least at the official level. But, truth to tell, the critics of the US – led by prime ministers Wen Jiabao of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia – had an easy story of incompetence and malfeasance to tell.
Comment: There is no need to be afraid of a big bad bank
Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, writes: Until recently, it appeared that the best way to support the banking system was simply to recapitalise one by one those institutions that had suffered large losses. That approach can work – but only if the losses can be clearly identified.
Comment: Financial crisis: lessons from the Nordic experience
Svein Gjedrem, governor of Norway’s central bank, writes: With the financial crisis gathering strength and spreading to the real economy, it is instructive to learn the lessons from the Nordic crisis of the mid -1990s. There are some important similarities today: but also some important differences.
Lex on economic nationalism
Financial markets have a new bogeyman. Economic nationalism, it is argued, will tip the world into a Great Depression, just as America’s Smoot-Hawley Act did 79 years ago. This is a horrifying but, frankly, also a distant prospect. The disaggregation of global supply chains, the source of the huge efficiencies that companies pass on to consumers, will not be easily undone.
Editorial comment: Fight foreclosure
Each foreclosure is always one too many for the people concerned. But having more than 2.3m homes seized in the US last year makes it a serious social problem. For a neighbourhood, empty homes are a blight. For the state, there is a heavy price to homelessness. As US lawmakers consider stimulus and financial rescue plans, they must implement measures to reduce mortgage foreclosures.
FT interactive: How the credit crunch has affected UK mortgage lending
UK homeowners are increasingly struggling to keep up mortgage payments and most new mortgage mortgage business is going to refinance existing loans, data released by the Financial Services Authority in January shows. Our interactive graphic reviews how the credit crunch has changed mortgage lending in the UK.