Which Way Now?

Eighteen months after the sub-prime loan crisis broke through the surface in the United States (US), 12 months after the investment banking firm Bear Stearns was rescued and six months after Lehman Brothers collapsed, there is no sign that the people of the world have seen the worst of the crisis that now envelopes the global economy. What started as a financial crisis has become a full blown real economy crisis that seems to spare no corner of the world.

The world economy is expected to contract in 2009 by up to 1%, the first such contraction since the second world war; open unemployment is expected to touch 233 million, the deepest level of joblessness since 1945; and world trade is contracting in an accelerating manner and is projected to fall by as much as 9% this year, again the sharpest fall since the numbers began to be tracked six decades ago.