Recent U.S.  gross domestic product data show the world's biggest economy emerged from recession in the third quarter, while in the UK data show that in the same period Britain's economy contracted.

British economist and author John Kay theorizes that Britain is mired in its worst recession on record in part because government support has not been evenly distributed across sectors.

"We've poured money into the financial sector -- by and large the financial sector in Britain is doing OK," he said.  "But very little of that is getting through to small and medium-size businesses out there in the rest of the economy."

Al Breach was Russia economist with UBS and Goldman Sachs and is currently managing partner of TheBrowser.com. The views expressed are his own.

HOSTENTAL, Switzerland - How bad was Japan’s “lost decade”? As we look east for clues as to the possible fate of western economies, it is worth dwelling on what actually happened, and not just how it was reported.

Japan’s stock market bubble burst at the end of 1989, and house prices started to fall about a year later. Asset prices at the peak were wildly inflated. Stock prices were trading at ratios of well above 50 times boom-time earnings, while the total value of housing represented around 300 percent of GDP.

These bubbles had formed after decades of rapid growth and, critically, even more rapid credit expansion. Total bank credit to the private sector had risen to 200 percent of GDP, doubling over 20 years.

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- David Andrews is director of David Andrews Media, a financial public relations consultancy with high profile fund management and financial services clients based in the UK, Ireland, Cayman Islands, Cape Verde, Beijing, Europe and the U.S. The opinions expressed are his own. -

David is a former financial journalist best known for his weekly Daily Express and Conde Nast ‘Money Matters’ columns.
Few will be lifting a glass to toast the first anniversary of the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers a year ago this week. With billions of dollars under management and thought to be invincible, the private bank was generally regarded as a potential gateway to the riches of Croessus for the ordained Masters of the Universe who prowled its Jackson Pollock-lined corridors.

But when the bank started to drown in the treacherous quagmire of its collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) - a type of structured asset-backed security whose value and payments are derived from a portfolio of fixed-income underlying assets – America’s Federal Reserve elected not to send in the cavalry.

The virtual overnight collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 was the catalyst which brought the world economy to its knees with breathtaking rapidity. The bank was so huge, a massive juggernaut reversing and elbowing its way in so many different markets that when the U.S. government allowed it to go to the wall, it caused a convulsion among its many counter-parties, which in turn caused global credit markets to seize up. "Normal" banking activity virtually ground to a halt.

We were all in dreadful trouble.

Some commentators, notably Warren Buffett and the International Monetary Fund’s former chief economist Raghuram Rajan, sounded many alarms bells about the runaway train that was the growing appetite for CDOs and other highly complex, derivatives-based tools which delivered fabulous wealth to a few but subliminally spread a cancerous, critical risk throughout the global credit system and effectively precipitated the crunch that led to a near collapse in the UK and U.S. banking systems and onto worldwide recession.

The chill winds of destabilisation were already whipping through the U.S. economy however well in advance of the Lehman collapse, as pigeons came home to roost in the wake of the extraordinary saga of so-called sub-prime mortgage misselling in the States.

As more and more people defaulted on their home loans – typically because their interest rate shot up after an initial honeymoon period, securities backed with subprime mortgages, widely held by financial firms, lost most of their value. The result was a precipitous collapse in the capital of many banks and the tightening credit around the world which signalled the beginning of the recession which has plagued us for the best part of the last 12 months.

Back in early 2007, as the rumblings of problems in the U.S. property market were beginning to be felt, I wrote (for a financial publication) "let’s just hope that the credit squeeze in the States which has caused so many problems for world markets is not contagious. Banks over here need to take note. Lending lots of money to poor people who have no hope of being able to repay at inflated rates further down the line is not good economic sense. It is sheer, short term greed, short sighted and likely to sink the lot of us if it continues."

Looking back at that sentiment now, it is clear that the "banks over here" did not take note. They very nearly took us all down with them.

It has been a long, long year….but we do, finally, appear to be emerging – albeit tentatively – blinking into a new post recessionary dawn.

While unemployment is still a major concern, both domestically and in the U.S., where it has climbed to around 9 per cent, markets are starting to recover and as I write the FTSE 100 index of blue-chip companies has rallied more than 40 percent since slumping to its low for the year in early March.

The move to 5,000 - a level last touched on October 3 - comes as a new survey from Nationwide Building Society showed that British consumers are feeling more confident than at any point in the past 12 months.

So, consumer confidence up, spending up, export sales up, property sales rising, more mortgage business being written….things are looking promising.

In an upbeat speech the other week, the cautious, invariably dour U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's reckoned that economic activity in the U.S. and around the world appeared to be "leveling out" and that "the prospects for a return to growth in the near term appear good".

Let’s hope he is right.

But – and as a natural pessimist I would say this - who knows what is around the corner?  Didn’t that wily old sage Mr Greenspan say just the other day that we will reel once again from a global downturn at some point in the future, as it is part of the cyclical nature of advanced capitalism?

As another American who once ducked and dived on the world stage, Donald Rumsfield, might have put it, "as we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know…"

You get my drift.

(James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

Investors met the news that Japan’s economy has emerged from a bone-breaking recession calmly and rationally: they sold shares quickly and in large amounts and made bets that consumer prices are going to be falling for years to come.

That’s because Japan’s recovery, coming as it does after a global bubble in the production of what I call, for lack of a more technical term, “stuff,” is really not sustainable.

The fact that the consumer portion of the recovery is only a reflection of income transfers from government to individuals isn’t very encouraging either.

More importantly, given that hopes for Japan were low anyway, the vulnerability of its recovery point to some important challenges the nascent rebounds in the U.S. and Europe now face.

Japan grew at a 3.7 percent seasonally adjusted annual rate in the second quarter, in data reported on Monday, quite a contrast with the almost 12 percent annual rate of contraction in the three months before.

The recovery was heavily dependent on consumer spending, goosed by government subsidies for buying hybrid cars and green appliances, as well as a heavy public works spending.

Public spending in a downturn is a good thing, but it needs to set the stage for private investment and consumption later, and in Japan this does not seem to be happening.

“Japan’s return to growth in the second quarter is a prime example of a ‘feel bad’ recovery,” Lombard Street Research’s Michael Taylor told clients.

“Recovery may prove to be rather short-lived, as so far there are precious few signs that Japan is capable of sustained, domestically-driven GDP growth. The continued accumulation of inventories in Q2, albeit at a more modest pace than in recent quarters, also casts doubt on growth prospects through the second half of the year.”

The underlying figures were ugly. Private capital investment fell 4.4 percent compared to the first quarter, and real investment in housing fell by nearly a tenth. Cash earnings for Japanese workers has fallen 7.1 percent in the year to June.

The recovery in Japan is like a long lost and reputedly rich uncle who, now that he has come home, proves to be a poor bedraggled thing who rather than bringing hope and gifts only really wants to cadge a meal and a place to sleep.

WHY THIS TIME IS JUST NOT NORMAL

In a typical economic recovery, inventories, having been run down are rebuilt. This should prompt companies to make capital investments to gear up new production. People get hired, they spend money and so do others who are less fearful for their jobs. Companies become more profitable and the cycle reinforces itself.

But in Japan, and perhaps elsewhere, this recovery isn’t really working that way. Capital expenditure isn’t coming back. Company profits are being hit. Whatever profitability improvements we see globally are largely down to cost cutting.

This squeeze hurts already nervous workers who in their turn aren’t spending much money. Unless, of course, they need to in order to get their share of a government handout.

Even with inventories being restocked, the amount of spare capacity in the global economy is very substantial. Company managers too will have been taught a lesson about leveraging up to expand: not only is demand not always there sometimes the banks want their money back unexpectedly and usually at the most inconvenient time.

Consumers, and not just in Japan, aren’t very confident in the future of property and decide that what once looked like a prime investment now looks like avoidable consumption.

Policy makers in Japan and elsewhere understand these dynamics and they have made heroic efforts to break the cycle. Up to a point, they have succeeded.

It’s not so much that the policies - huge increases in liquidity and massive stimulus - aren’t appropriate but that our expectations for what they can do has been too high. We are no doubt better off than we would have been, but we have shifted the burden of re-making the economy and paying down the debt out in time. It will be a longer, slower process and will disappoint many investors who think we are back to the good old days.

One advantage Japan does have is its position in Asia, where it may be able to benefit if Chinese domestic demand takes off. But overall Japan is linked to global trade, which while it has bottomed, has made its recovery due to government spending which some day soon will have to be replaced.

As for Japan domestically, the fiscal stimulus will peter out in the first quarter of next year. What will arrive to take its place I cannot tell you, but if nothing does it will prove to have been a brief, miserable recovery.

(At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund. )

– Christopher Swann is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –

Recession historians on Wall Street often consider a downturn over when job declines fall to half their peak.

The July employment report, with its revisions, takes us past this milestone. The numbers were better than expected in almost every respect. There was even a tick up in hours worked, especially in manufacturing. The output component of the recession has probably already ended.

Even so, the labor market is likely to remain grim for a very long time. That a decline in payrolls of 247,000 should be taken as good news is an indication of how bad things have become. Such falls were close to the average in most postwar recessions, not an indication that the worst was over.

In the recession of the early 1980s, the peak job loss was 389,000. In this recession it has been around 740,000. So we are still on a different trajectory. The United States may continue to bleed jobs at a fast pace for some time to come.

There has seldom been more slack in the labor market. Businesses have plenty of room to increase the working hours of existing employees — which have declined far faster than in previous downturns.

Part-time workers can be brought fully on board. Only then might companies add to payrolls.

After the end of the 2001 recession, it took 21 months for the labor market to fully turn around. Even the White House, which is becoming much better at managing expectations, is saying that it still expects the unemployment rate to reach 10 percent.

Once people lose their jobs, they are also spending longer out of work than in previous downturns. In the recession of the early 1980s the average spell of unemployment reached a peak of 20 weeks. Now it is at 25 weeks. A third of the jobless have now been without work for more than six months, up from 29 percent in June — both post-war records.

This is bad news for consumption, since state payouts typically cover less than half of a previous salary.

For America’s hobbled banking system the ever growing duration of unemployment is almost as ominous as job destruction itself. Few consumers have sufficient precautionary savings to continue to service debt for such extended periods once their income is halved.

Under an optimistic scenario, in which job creation rebounds to about 100,000 a month, it will still take five years to recover the more than 6.6 million jobs lost during the recession. This should keep consumer spending weak and means that the United States will remain vulnerable.

Over coming months the temptation to ease off the monetary and fiscal pedals will increase. It should be resisted. Policy makers should get used to looking at economic data in absolute as well as relative terms.

(James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

Things in the U.S. economy are moving in the right direction, but the pace will be slow, frustrating and very likely to disappoint investors betting on a rip roaring old-fashioned recovery.

News that the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller 20 City house price index rose for the first time in almost three years in the three months to May was greeted with much rejoicing.
The Case-Shiller data is important and encouraging but not nearly as positive as it looks at first glance.

For one thing, house prices are supposed to rise in the spring; when looked at on a more meaningful seasonally adjusted basis prices are still falling, though at a slower rate than before.

For another, the relative improvement coincides with foreclosure moratoriums which are delaying but not eliminating the flood of repossessed houses.  One way or another these houses will need to clear the market and be a continued source of downward price pressure.

Rather than a recovery we are probably facing an extended slow descent in house prices. Compared to how things looked in February this is good news.

Inventories of unsold houses are declining, though they are still unusually high, and housing starts actually rose in June, though again from historically very low levels.
All in, it looks like a tentative recovery in housing activity, which will feel very good indeed after the past two years.

In combination with a bit of inventory restocking, after all there is some final demand in the economy, you might even call it a recovery.

But rather than springing out of bed and hurtling back to work, the U.S. economy will be like a recovering swine flu victim with little energy and very susceptible to a relapse.

“The normal cyclical dynamic in which housing, consumer durable goods purchases, and investment spending rebound in response to monetary easing is unlikely to be as powerful in this episode as during a typical economic recovery,” New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley said in a speech on Wednesday.

“There are a number of factors which suggest that the pace of recovery will be considerably slower than usual,” he said.

America is still “long” housing, its just that too many of the houses are not in the right places and too many are owned by people who’d be better off renting.

We’ve seen the homeowner vacancy rate decline, but the rental vacancy rate rise to record highs. Even if we believed that the price adjustment was over, it would be hard to underwrite a strong economic rebound on the back of housing in the current circumstances.

BALANCE SHEETS REPAIRED, CONSUMPTION IMPAIRED

The key to any recovery is consumption, which at 70 percent of the U.S economy may well be at a generational high.

Even if house prices don’t fall very far from here, they, along with stock prices, are down enough to have dealt a very serious blow to the average household’s balance sheet. Quite sensibly, if a bit surprisingly, people are attempting to fill that hole by saving.

According to U.S. Commerce Department data the savings rate rose to 6.9 percent in May, the highest since the end of 1993 and up from just over zero in early 2008. Who’s to say too that Americans don’t continue to increase their savings from here, perhaps back up to 8.0 percent or more.

Unemployment is rising and will take some time to fall and there is a growing realization that given growing life expectancy people’s pensions are woefully underfunded.

Income growth is not going to rescue consumption either.  The New York Fed’s Dudley pointed out that despite cuts in hours worked and lousy wage gains, incomes in the first half of the year were boosted by a number of one-time factors, such as falling energy prices and a one-off payment to Social Security recipients.

A higher savings rate and poor income growth add up to a really profound check on consumption spending, something that will make earnings growth for many companies difficult despite savage cost cutting.

I’d bet too that income growth recovers long before the savings rate falls. Business plans or investments strategies based on growing consumption in the U.S. are going to be losing ones for quite some time.

And of course there is commercial real estate, which is not only the single biggest landmine for banks but will be a source of further outright contraction as current projects are completed and developers, businesses and their banks shorten their sails.

Construction, once begun is carried through but who will be breaking ground on new projects?

None of this is necessarily bad, and again, is actually pretty good compared to where we were just a few short months ago. But a world in which Americans save and pay down debt and where banks lend cautiously while rebuilding balance sheets may not be one where current stock market values are validated.

(At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund.)

– James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

The recession will soon be dead, laid to rest alongside the idea of the “Great Moderation”, a set of hopeful assumptions that underpins expectations about economic growth and asset valuations.

This, when investors, bankers and executives ultimately realise it will cause them to pull in their horns, take less risks and be less willing to pay high prices for assets.

Economists, observing that since the 1980s recessions have been mild and short and expansions long and robust, developed the theory that better economic management, namely cutting rates in the aftermath of bubbles, globalisation and, get this, improvements in financial markets, had led to a sort of best-of-all-possible-worlds “Great Moderation”, in which economic volatility fell and with it the risk premia required for holding financial assets.

This little theory has, needless to say, come somewhat unstuck during the current downturn which has been great but far from moderate.

This raises the uncomfortable possibility that the last 25 years of good times were just a bit of luck, or even worse, an artificially engineered consumption binge with central banks and governments playing a role similar to what Chicago tavern keepers used to do — opening up early so last night’s patrons can have a quick nip to take the edge off on the way into work.

It’s a debate which is far from academic and its outcome will influence much more than the actions of central bankers and regulators.

While financial market volatility has been a feature during the past decades, the idea, or at least the feeling, of the Great Moderation has seeped into the culture, influencing the behaviour of actors across the economy.

A corporate manager is going to be more likely to leverage up and go for the big hit if he feels as if most recessions are mild and short, in the same way that a consumer will buy a boat on credit or an investment property for the same reasons. If the weather never gets that cold why waste money on insulation?

What if these people now decide that the universe is a less friendly place and that they ought to, heaven help us all, save a considerable amount against the day?

This is really about volatility, which, because it can tend to ruin you, is expensive. Most investment or economic management strategies have at their heart attempts to limit or cushion volatility. And so, if we really can expect more volatility in the economy we can expect it to find expression in a lower ceiling for economic growth, leverage and asset prices.

IT AIN’T NECESSARILY SO
Of course, the current debacle may be just one data point rather than a trend, a view financial markets seem to have adopted. That is more or less the argument of Larry Summers and the U.S. administration, who are betting that this is the kind of thing that happens only very rarely.

This is a version of the 100-year storm argument beloved of company managers trying to explain why their results are so poor; the implication is you could not have been expected to plan for a freak storm and once it is past it is back to the good times.

This thinking lies behind the strategy of making financial conditions so easy that people are tempted to borrow and invest. It just might work, and we just might have a sharp and long recovery which generates enough revenue to pay off the public debts we are now racking up.

But two other possibilities, both speculative, spring to mind.

One is that deleveraging proves to be not just an event but a state of mind. As in Japan, people may simply decide that they’ve had enough risk, thank you very much, leading to a weak recovery, a relapse and then a quandary about how best to pay off the bills we’ve recently run up.

The other is that the current mix of policy, deep cuts in interest rates, deficit spending and quantitative easing, the effects of which are little understood, ends up breeding volatility of its own, probably in inflation.

The cost of that volatility will be an unpleasant surprise to the investors now bidding up the prices of shares and managers now preparing to invest for expansion, and one that might lead them to at last act more conservatively.

Add to arguments for a new “Great Immoderation”  that emerging markets will almost certainly be more of a driver of global economic growth under most of the reasonable scenarios in the coming decade. Emerging markets historically are more volatile and if as they grow to be a bigger piece of the pie are likely to make overall growth more volatile.

None of this takes away from the essentially good news that the recession looks to be ending soon, but higher economic volatility will hang heavy over the recovery and the cycle to come.

– At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund.–

– James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

Even without a huge fiscal boost or a hell-for-leather central bank, Europe could have a recovery, albeit a tepid one, on the cards by the end of the year.

Recent forward looking economic data is still grim, but hides within it the seeds of a rebound, as the absolutely brutal fall in manufacturing over the past six months burns itself out.

The euro zone’s economic situation is still dire and it still faces outsized risks; its banking system must deleverage and has the potential for disastrous losses while it remains unclear who in the world exactly is going to be buying enough goods to stoke a sustained recovery.

But nothing goes in the same direction forever, and absent a health or banking disaster it is reasonable to expect positive surprises from demand as the year wears on.

As those who are betting on a recovery are generally backing U.S. growth, that surprise when it comes could give a nice boost to European markets.

“There is good convincing evidence that the inventory cycle in the euro area is turning favorably,” said Aurelio Maccario, chief euro zone economist at UniCredit Group.

To come out of a recession two very important preconditions are that businesses successfully run down their stocks of goods and, at the very least, enjoy stabilization in demand.

Data from the euro zone indicates that we are moving towards such a state. The manufacturing component of Markit’s Eurozone Flash Services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) was up 2.7 points to 43.6 while inventories were being run down at a record pace at 43.6. Manufacturing orders were up sharply, by 6.4 points to 37.4.

“It’s significant,” Maccario said “It’s the second consecutive increase and may represent the first signal that the trend is inverting, which is key.”

What that likely shows is that the pace of the recession is slowing, the second quarter will certainly show negative growth but also certainly be better than the first.

Other recent data was also showed improvement. The ZEW index, a measure of German analyst and investor sentiment showed that optimists on a six month view actually outnumbered pessimists for the first time since the blithe days of July 2007. A survey of French business sentiment carried out by INSEE jumped by a record amount in April.

Of course sentiment is ephemeral and could easily run into the brick wall of job losses and credit availability.

DELEVERAGING IN A LOAN INTENSIVE ECONOMY

But whereas U.S. banks have made some progress in deleveraging, the same is less true for financial institutions in the euro zone, leaving open the possibility of a cut back in lending crimping growth.

In their favor, euro zone households are less indebted - owing money equal to 93 percent of GDP - than their U.S. peers, who have gorged on debt up to 130 percent of GDP. Similarly, they are less vulnerable to falls in stocks and houses because they own fewer of the first and their was generally less of a bubble in the second, a huge supporting factor for Europe as the next few years of very low growth grind on.

But Europe’s capital markets are smaller in relation to their economy than in the U.S. and their banks bigger. That mostly comes into play in the corporate sector, which has increased their debt burden in recent years and which, especially among smaller enterprises, is heavily dependent on bank borrowing.

Loans to the private sector grew at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in March, according to the ECB, down fairly sharply from February’s 4.3 percent rate. A survey by the ECB of bank lending released on Wednesday showed that banks were still tightening standards in the first quarter, but doing so less drastically than at the end of 2008.

The ECB has thus far avoided intervening directly in credit markets, preferring instead to provide financing to banks on securitizations which the banks themselves continue to own.

But ECB Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi on Tuesday indicated that the central bank could move to buy bonds directly from banks, thus presumably freeing up money for further lending to consumers and businesses.

This makes a great deal of sense. The ECB is expected to announce “additional measures” next week which are widely expected to include some form quantitative measures such as credit purchases.

The euro zone could surprise, and pleasantly, but the longer term is still looking like a slog. U.S. demand cannot be counted on and Asian competition for what is less will only sharpen.

So it may turn out to be a rainy day, but it will seem very welcome compared to the darkness of the winter just passing.

– At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund. –

- Jorge Maia is head of Research and Information for Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa, established in 1940 to promote economic growth and industrial development. The opinions expressed are his own -

Serious shockwaves are hitting Africa’s shores as the global economic crisis unfolds.

The extent and depth of the damage is extremely difficult to assess or project, but it is clear that the pattern of financial flows associated with investment, lending and trading activity has been dramatically altered, with detrimental economic and social implications for the continent at large. The adverse impact has been gradually spreading from a regional perspective - a serious setback to Africa’s recent growth performance, which had averaged 6 percent a year from 2003 to 2008.

The effects will vary widely, depending on each country’s integration within the global financial system, its dependency on exports and tourism receipts, official development assistance and remittances from African citizens working overseas, among other factors.

Access to trade credit lines used to finance imports and investments is under threat due to the global credit crunch, while portfolio flows have been reversed and remain weak due to institutional deleveraging, pessimistic investor sentiment or extreme risk aversion.

Foreign direct investment flows are also expected to contract, although the rather long lead-time of typical projects could imply that some of the capital may have already been committed. The African banking sector is feeling the freeze in interbank lending worldwide from a funding standpoint, and may come under substantial pressure through its customer base should the economic slowdown intensify on the home front.

Where capital is still available, its cost is likely to have risen substantially, with implications for the viability of projects and for the debt repayment obligations of African countries. Such adverse trends are not only impacting negatively on capital inflows and national balances of payments, but also are resulting in greater volatility in foreign exchange markets.

The productive sectors of Africa’s economies are being progressively affected by a fast deteriorating global environment as demand weakens, unfavourable terms of trade develop, corporate earnings decline, investment activity slows down and jobs are shed. As elsewhere in the globe, this has led to continuous downward revisions in economic growth projections. For instance, the latest IMF forecast of 3.4 percent growth for the African continent in 2009 is now considered optimistic by the IMF’s own leadership.

The African economies that will contain the adversity are likely to be those that remain highly vigilant in managing the downside potential, those that are in a position to adopt counter-cyclical measures and that make an effort to seek new opportunities and competitive gains. However, liquidity or fiscal constraints are likely to prevent the majority of African countries from adopting economic stimulus packages. In order to preserve productive capacity, it is absolutely essential that a concerted effort be made to sustain private sector access to credit, including development funding.

Major crises bring to the fore not only comparative weaknesses but also comparative strengths. Thus, economies that manage downturns more successfully are those that exploit their comparative strengths instead of focusing on their weaknesses. The African continent is richly endowed with commodities and other resources, including an enormous, yet largely unexploited agricultural potential. Forecasts for most commodity prices point, at best, towards a very modest recovery in 2009. However, considering the demand and supply forces at play in the medium- to long-term, commodity prices should resume an upward trend. This will be underpinned by the roll-out of massive stimulus packages focusing on infrastructure investment throughout the globe, by the eventual recovery of the world’s economies and by the resumption of growth in income levels, particularly in emerging regions. After all, the long-term demand for commodities from the fast-growing and very large emerging economies such as China and India has certainly not evaporated.

As credit starts flowing again through the global financial system, several emerging economies are likely to exhibit signs of recovery first, including China, India and Brazil. This should support a recovery in commodity markets and renewed investor interest in Africa for its resource wealth. The challenge remains for African countries to make the most of a future recovery, tirelessly encouraging the beneficiation of their resources instead of continuing to export value-adding opportunities, missing out on massive export earnings potential.

The impact of ongoing international efforts to thaw global credit markets and stimulate economic activity worldwide will, however, take time to bear results. In the meantime, competitive forces scrambling for a diminished global pie will pose unprecedented threats to African enterprises. Such challenges may include aggressive market penetration efforts and even protectionist measures on the part of foreign businesses and governments. African enterprises will have to adopt tough, well-formulated strategic decisions, as their present strategies may not hold them in good stead under rapidly deteriorating market conditions. They should be seriously vigilant, managing downside potential, adopting counter-cyclical measures, including appropriate cost-cutting measures and efficiency improvements, while constantly seeking opportunities for the development of new/niche markets.

African countries that remain committed to sound economic management will tend to restore investor confidence faster and mitigate the impact of the downturn more successfully. The momentum exhibited in improving the investment environment in numerous African countries must be maintained, so as to grow vibrant and competitive business sectors that will create employment and sustain broad-based economic growth. All feasible forms of support should be provided to the private sector at large, so as to sustain its growth potential and developmental impact. This should include strong and concerted governmental opposition to protectionist tendencies emerging globally, and insistence on greater participation in international governance.

On the business front, African enterprises that remain sharply focused on competitiveness improvements should be relatively successful in domestic and/or global markets, stand a better chance of surviving the crisis and should prosper in the long-run.

James H. Carr is chief operating officer for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a Washington-based association that promote access to basic banking services for America’s working families. He is a member of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development’s “Experts of Color Clearinghouse”. The views expressed are his own.

The U.S. economy is unraveling at a pace not seen in decades. The more than 650,000 jobs lost last month has contributed to a growing concern that the unemployment rate could rise to 10 percent or higher before the economy rebounds. At the center of the economy’s instability is a foreclosure crisis that has claimed 3.5 million homes in the last year alone, and threatens the loss of an additional 8 to 10 million homes to foreclosure over the next five years.

The loss of wealth associated with the collapse of the housing market is staggering. More than $5 trillion in housing equity has virtually evaporated since the foreclosure crisis began. Major stock indexes have also been cut in half, further contributing to decreased consumer confidence, substantially reduced spending, lower productivity, rising unemployment and additional foreclosures.

The magnitude of the economic decline has led many observers to conclude that the current crisis is an “equal opportunity financial nightmare.” But, reality paints a different picture.

While few have been able to escape the financial pain completely, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and many Asian sub‐populations are bearing the brunt of this national epidemic. Today, as the national unemployment rate rests at 8.1 percent, African Americans and Latinos are mired in double-digit job losses — the unemployment rate exceeds 13 percent for African Americans, is just under 11 percent for Latinos, and is a little over 7 percent for non-Hispanic whites. For young black males, the rate is 25 percent and climbing.

Before the current crisis, African Americans and Latinos held on average a mere $10 and $12 of net worth respectively for every $100 held by the typical non‐Hispanic white household. The disproportionate impact of the foreclosure crisis on African Americans and Latinos expands further the racial and ethnic wealth gap.

African Americans and Latinos were the disproportionate targets for the unfair, deceptive and reckless lending practices that triggered the foreclosure collapse and imploded the credit markets. The situation is so dire within the African‐American community that United for a Fair Economy, a Boston‐based policy group, estimates that African Americans could experience the greatest loss of wealth since Reconstruction.

To date, federal intervention has focused almost exclusively on propping up the credit markets. While ensuring the health of the credit system is essential, ignoring the plight of struggling homeowners has proven to be a costly and ineffective remedy. In total, the federal government has provided $9.7 trillion in investments and loans to ailing financial institutions. This amount is equivalent to almost 90 percent of all mortgage debt outstanding. Yet only 11 percent of outstanding home loans are delinquent or in foreclosure.

Meanwhile, the financial system remains in critical condition and may require several hundred billion dollars of additional life support. The Obama administration recently launched the most comprehensive program to date to stem foreclosures, but more borrower‐focused assistance is needed. The administration has also enacted a major economic recovery program to preserve or create 3 to 4 million jobs. Although impressive in scale and scope, that nearly $800 billion package of stimulus spending will not fully repair the severely damaged economy that has been inherited by the new administration.

There is growing consensus that a second round of stimulus will be needed. The administration and Congress should consider targeting spending in a manner that prioritizes communities that have the highest levels of unemployment, the greatest concentrations of foreclosures and historically under‐funded, inferior or poorly maintained infrastructure.

Channeling dollars to individuals and communities that need them most will immediately stimulate the economy and save and create jobs because families living on the margins of survival will pour those recovery dollars immediately back into the economy through spending on food, medicine, clothing, child care, energy, transportation and other necessities. Prioritizing areas hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis would more directly help stabilize the housing markets and steady falling home prices that continue to infect financial institutions.

Finally, investing in areas most in need of infrastructure improvements would provide fertile ground for shovel‐ready projects in communities long‐neglected. This prioritization of economic recovery spending would not only jump start the economy, it would aid the most financially vulnerable populations, stabilize communities, and reward all Americans by providing a more direct route to economic recovery.

Of course, there are those who will feel now is not the time to focus on wealth and income disparities and that further one‐time tax rebates to struggling middle-income families generally would be more equitable in the current crisis. But broad‐based stimulus checks will not have the same economic leverage effect as channeling those same dollars to the families and communities that need them the most.