subprime crisis

Global recession: How deep and for how long?

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Global attention has now shifted from concern over the dimensions of the financial crisis to assessing how deep the real economy recession it has triggered would be and how long it would last. With the recession intensifying and projections turning more pessimistic, there are reasons to fear that a recovery expected in 2010 may not materialise, argue C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh.

The Subprime Debacle

As the United States braces itself for the onset of a recession, much of the blame for the current downturn is being attributed to the recent subprime mortgage crisis. While boom and bust cycles in real estate markets are nothing new, what distinguishes the current crisis is that the massive run-up in home prices was driven by the proliferation of new forms of securitized finance that permitted massive sums of loan capital to be pumped into the property markets.