The credit crisis that first broke in August 2007 deteriorated very quickly in September 2008. The month was dominated by bank failures and bailouts, a dysfunctional LIBOR market, free falling equity markets, failing credit markets and a general crisis of liquidity. Equities, bonds and commodities all sold off simultaneously as investors sought to reduce risk

China‘s third challenge is a banking system which, while making progress, is still transitioning to a modem, efficient, market-driven system with proper controls, management, and professional staff. Some risk-averse credit officers may still believe it is safer to lend to state-owned enterprises backed by what they see as implicit government guarantees, rather than to dynamic

A few interesting findings about short selling: 1. There is evidence in short selling activity consistent with information leakage and front-running. (Do Short Sellers Front-Run Insider Sales? Khan and Lu, June 2008.) 2. Short selling restrictions tend to be effective against negative skewness at market level but not at individual stock levels. (Efficiency and the

The Fed and Treasury are putting their heads together to find a solution. They need to figure out first what the problem is beyond the symptoms we see. It is, however, a first step. Managing expectations at a time like this is as important as material policy. It looks like they propose a system wide

In the US: The consumer is quite broke. Unemployment is rising. Firms have no access to credit. And now the government is quite broke too. The cost of cleaning up the banking system will fall on the government first. A budget deficit would imply austerity and a severe limitation to government fiscal spend as well