$50 trillion wiped off world financial assets: ADB

[seemslikeadream]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/International-Business/50-trillion-wiped-off-world-financial-assets-ADB/rssarticleshow/4243798.cms






MANILA: The global crisis wiped a staggering $50 trillion off the value of financial assets last year including $9.6 trillion of losses in
developing Asia alone, the Asian Development Bank said Monday.

``This is by far the most serious crisis to hit the world economy since the Great Depression,'' said ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda. But he predicted Asia would be ``one of the first regions to emerge from it.''

In a study commissioned by the Manila-based lender on the impact of the financial crisis on emerging economies, it estimated the value of financial assets worldwide, currency, equity and bond markets, to have dropped by $50 trillion in 2008.

It said developing Asia was hit harder, losing the equivalent of just over one year's worth of gross domestic product, than other emerging economies because the region has expanded much more rapidly.

In Latin America, losses were estimated at $2.1 trillion. According to the study, the figures provide clear proof of the close connections between markets and economies around the world, leaving few, if any, countries immune to financial or economic fallout. A recovery can only now be envisaged for late 2009 or early 2010, it said.

A sprawling region, developing Asia includes 44 economies from the central Asian republics to China to the Pacific islands. The bank had earlier projected the region's growth to slow to 5.8 percent this year from an estimated 6.9 percent last year.

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[Karenina]

2. kick

[Zynx]

3. I keep seeing the strange hypothesis Asia will ride this out well.

The truth is that the GDPs of those countries are contracting faster than almost any other region. They are completely reliant on two things: 1. exports 2. cheap foreign capital. Neither are coming back soon.