Financial Crisis Not Over Yet

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

This weekend served up a heaping helping of my entire personal stew of economic nightmares. So here it is, your global economic news for the weekend:

LA Times: Commodities tumble on fears that China will try to slow its economy. “The fast-running bull market in commodities hit a wall Friday as prices plunged on fears that China will try to slow its economy to tame inflation. Rumors of another Chinese interest-rate hike started a chain reaction of selling across financial markets worldwide….”

Financial Times: Concern grows as Dublin spurns help. “Irish officials insisted on Sunday that they did not need fiscal assistance from the European Union, even as pressure mounted on Dublin to accept aid and present plans to restructure its banking system….Behind the scenes, the ECB has put pressure on Dublin to take steps within days that would provide an urgently needed boost to confidence in Ireland’s public finances and struggling banking system.”

Wall Street Journal: Credit Fears, QE2, Elections Prompt Muni Selloff. “Investors sold off long-term municipal bonds in the past week, sending a shiver through a normally stable market….In recent months, with reports of financial woes in Harrisburg, Pa., and of some municipal borrowers walking away from debts, some investors have begun to question whether government borrowers are as reliable as investors’ presumed about repaying loans.”

Financial Times: Nervousness as bonds braced for Greek tests. “Eurostat, the Commission’s audit unit, is set to revise upwards Greece’s 2009 budget deficit figure to about 15.3 per cent of gross domestic product from the current estimate of 13.6 per cent of GDP….This could spark a sell-off in the Greek and other peripheral bond markets as investors are increasingly nervous about the ability of the weaker eurozone economies to turn round their economies and restore growth…..David Owen, chief European financial economist at Jefferies, the investment bank, said: [] ‘If investors start to sell bonds of Spain and Italy in the way they have been selling Greek, Irish and Portuguese bonds, then the crisis will take on a whole new dimension.'”

All of these are trouble spots for the world economy. Throw in Eastern Europe and hot money flows into developing countries and you’ve got an even half dozen shocks that could send us into another tailspin. Hopefully none of them will happen. But all it would take is for one or two of them to unfold badly. Keep your fingers crossed.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate