US Credit Crisis and Spillovers to Asia

We review key highlights of the global credit crisis. We then consider how financial turmoil in the largest advanced economies might be transmitted to East Asia. The focus is on foreign trade links, international capital flows, currency market pressures and mismatches, financial sector fragilities, and countercyclical monetary and fiscal policy actions. We introduce a set of vulnerability indicators and explore whether an ordinal ranking of East Asian economies according to these vulnerability indicators seems to be related to the cross-country differences in estimated slowdowns of economic growth during the crisis. Finally, we discuss how Asian economies might encourage the adoption of a stronger regulatory and supervisory framework in the USA and whether some Asian economies and the USA might pursue a more "balanced" growth strategy after the crisis.