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Channel C: Global Financial Crisis

global financial crisis

The air is going out of the global economy.

By Citizen Correspondent Mike Small
Date Posted: 10/07/08
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Welcome to Channel C, where C stands for Citizen. In this new series, Orato.com's editors will collect the best citizen and first-person coverage of major news stories. Today we look at impact of the financial crisis on a global scale.

It's fair to say that the economic crisis is the biggest concern of the American people right now, despite what Sarah "Palling around with terrorists" Palin will have you believe. But what's not getting as much media coverage, at least here in North America, is how much this chaos is affecting the rest of the world.

Did you know that China has invested $1 trillion on U.S. Treasury bills, bonds and debt securities? Oiwan Lam of GlobalVoicesOnline quotes Chinese-language blogger Chenjian:

  • The amount China invested on fannie and freddie is more than one hundred times of all the foreign donation to the Sichuan earthquake. What is the reason behind our policy on US investment? Is there any unknown secret behind such ridiculous decision?

Bombay Diaries blogs from India and says that although his country has to deal with high housing prices, corrupt politicians and archaic real estate laws, he's happy to be a citizen of India right now:

  • Thank you citizens of India: For understanding what flat broke feels like. For paying your credit card bills on time. For buying houses to live in and not to bet on. For paying your home loans on time. And more than anything else for saving.

An unexpected side effect of the financial crisis? Lightwater blogs that it makes Scottish independence a less-likely proposition than it already was:

  • One side effect of the current financial crisis is that an independent Scotland is looking less likely. No time to be a small nation in these troubled times, viz, Iceland, Belgium and Ireland. Remember that one of the main reasons for the Union with England in 1703 was that the Scottish economy was bust.

Americans aren't the only ones getting hit hard.


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