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The World's Financial Future

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World economics are reeling. We put together a global roundtable to look at why, and what should be done.

An electronic monitor displays the Dow Jones Industrial Average on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange near the close on Monday, Aug. 8, 2011. It was the sixth worst point decline for the Dow in the last 112 years and the worst one-day drop since December 2008. Every stock in the Standard and Poor's 500 index declined Monday. (AP)
An electronic monitor displays the Dow Jones Industrial Average on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange near the close on Monday, Aug. 8, 2011. (AP)

No safe haven. That’s been the feeling lately as markets and economies around the world have tumbled and bounced and reeled.

Harvard Economist Ken Rogoff in the studio with Tom Ashbrook. (Alex Kingsbury /WUBR)
Harvard Economist Ken Rogoff in the studio with Tom Ashbrook. (Alex Kingsbury / WBUR)

No safe haven in the downgraded U.S., where politicians fight as growth stalls. No safe haven in Europe, where bigger and bigger countries teeter on default. No safe haven even in China, where inflation is speaking up and exporters depend, after all, on US and European markets.

Wall Street’s going like a yo-yo. Millions have no job.

This hour On Point: we tap a global roundtable –- US, Europe, China -– to ask where this goes.
-Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Ken Rogoff, professor of public policy and economics at Harvard University.

Geoffrey Wood, professor of economics at the Cass Business School at London’s City University.

Tao Wang, head of the Chinese Economic Research for UBS in Beijing.

From Tom's Reading List

CNN: "All three major U.S. stock indexes sank between 5% and 7%, pushing the Dow below 11,000 for the first time since last November. U.S. stocks have fallen 15% during the past two weeks."

Financial Times: "Four years into the financial crisis, it is becoming increasingly clear that the biggest deficit is not in credit, but credibility. Markets can adjust to a downgrade of global growth, but they cannot cope with a spiralling loss of confidence in leadership and a growing sense that policymakers are disconnected from reality. What needs to be done to move away from the precipice?"

Bloomberg: "China’s inflation accelerated to the fastest pace in three years in July, limiting the scope for monetary easing to support growth as plunging stock markets signal the global recovery is weakening."

This program aired on August 10, 2011.

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