The Global Concern

As concern over another global recession intensifies, Asian stocks tumbled last week with its regional index falling to a three-year low. In a Bloomberg report, Tim Shroeders stated “It would be flippan to suggest this is just a blip… The aggressive selling of equity markets seems to reflect a heightened probability that the world is moving toward a recession.” This comes as the growing concern of the European debt crisis and whether a slowdown in the U.S. economy will cause global growth to stall and earnings to be weakened. The European Systemic Risk Board said that there has been considerable increase in the threat to the financial system concerning the debt crisis; the IMF said that the sovereign debt issue has generated as much as $300 billion euros in credit risk.

Along with the markets being hurt, many regional benchmarks sank this past week: Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell 3.4 percent, South Korea’s Kospi Index fell 7.8 percent, and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index lost 5.9 percent. Crude oil fell 66 cents a barrel on the NYME.

– Charles Stack

Article submitted by: Charles Stack of the Capital Markets Lab (CML). To learn more about the Capital Markets Lab (CML) please visit https://business.fiu.edu/capital-markets-lab/.