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What Are The Weaknesses Faced During The Financial Crisis

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European weaknesses exposed during the financial crisis. ‘Observers warned for well over a decade that the EU was ill-prepared’ (Pisani-Ferry & Sapir, 2010) for a Financial Crisis if one was to occur. This was certainly the case as Europe was engulfed in the financial crisis. The spreading of the credit crisis across Europe, originating from The USA, exposed Europe’s weaknesses and tested its strength (Sayek & Taskin, 2014). This paper reveals how lack of regulation and supervision alongside with banks who let their solvency and liquidity ratios run too low, which consequently resulted in the financial crisis. Furthermore, paper examines how the financial crisis solution varies with the macroeconomic structure of the economy. Lack of …show more content…

As Olivier Blanchard, the chief economist at IMF, described austerity as “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” (Pearlstein, 2012). This argument contradicts Keynesians, who believe in borrowing and spending to stimulate growth. In reality, macroeconomic solution varies with the macroeconomic structure of the economy. Austerity is the solution when economic growth isn’t influenced by government spending, as a spending cut does not significantly harm the economy. Spending cuts should be imposed as gradual as possible in order to allow private sector to adjust. It also depends on austerity measures such as which spending is increased or decreased, what taxes are raised or lowered. In countries such as Greece, debt levels and interest rates were so high on government bonds that it couldn’t borrow and spend their way out (Zettelmeyer, Trebesch and Gulati, 2013). Austerity imposed too quickly can have a backlash, which is certainly the case with Greece. With aggressive tax increases and budget cut measures can consequently lead to an increase in unemployment followed by decrease in spending and investment resulting in the budget deficit to

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