The new wave of the global financial crisis and a few consequences thereof on the global economy

The crisis that started on the subprime mortgage market of the U. S. in August 2007 has gradually spread to other areas of the financial market and to other countries. In the second wave, which started in September 2008, the crisis evolved into a bank crisis (liquidity and then solvency crisis) in the developed countries, into a currency crisis in other countries, and has become increasingly global, i.e. it has spread to a growing number of countries, and has increasingly affected the real sector. 1 It is now clear that in the developed market economies the financial crisis culminates in economic recession, the depth, spatial spread and expected length of which can hardly be forecasted. This paper analyses the latest developments of the global financial crisis. The first part of the paper presents the characteristic features of the current phase of the crisis. The second part provides an overview about a few impacts of the crisis on finances and the real economy. The third part deals with crisis management at national and EU level, while the fourth part is about global crisis management. The study of the topic is made difficult by the fact that events on the money and capital markets have recently accelerated, and many of the former analyses have become obsolete within a short period of time. The fifth part of the paper presents some of the impacts on the real economy. The sixth part contains the summary and the conclusions. Due to the nature of the topic this study mostly relies on information and analyses published in foreign and domestic daily papers, weeklies, and on the internet, since for the shortness of time expositions of theoretical rigor could not be prepared about the developments of the latest weeks and months. Naturally, the wider background and the precedents were thoroughly discussed in the national and international literature, and the conclusions thereof were taken into account in this study.