In recent years,the most prominent change of the international situation was the occurrence of the financial crisis in the U.S.,exposing the shortcomings of interests privatization,loss socialization and crisis globalization in the U.S. financial system.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the rise of China and other emerging economies and their development mode of high savings and low consumption,which exists along with the U.S. mode of low savings and high consumption,result in an imbalance of the world economy,and world economic imbalance is the root of the financial crisis,so China and other emerging economies should also bear some responsibility for financial crisis. The allegation of so-called responsibility is straightforward intended to make an excuse to let China and other emerging economies financially support the U.S.,rather than to reform the irrational and unjust existing international financial order as required by developing countries. In fact,the “balanced” world economy has never come up. The real purpose of the allegation of “world economic imbalance” by the U.S.,etc. is to shift the burden of the crisis,to pass their problems on to China and other developing countries,rather than to find the root within the capitalist system. The direct responsible parties for this international financial crisis are the Western capitalist countries,but not the developing countries that are alleged to be at fault. As an American economist Brett Swanson wrote,the problems of the U.S. economy was originated from the inappropriate monetary policy of U.S. rather than “global imbalances.”
Although it’s difficult to reconcile the understandings about causes of the crisis,in front of the global financial crisis and the challenges of a global economic recession,economies unanimously adopt the expansionary fiscal and monetary policy and implement economic stimulus plans,which presented the spirit of “coordinating when in the same boat”.
Anti-crisis measures played a proper role in preventing economic “free fall”,and the world economy “bottomed out” into the post-crisis period. However,the substitution of government debt for private debt promoted developed economies and some emerging economies to expand the public debt greatly during the crisis. The most prominent manifestation was the sovereign debt growth and crisis in the Euro zone,and overindebtedness in many economies caused the increasing fiscal deficit. The government fiscal deficit of Portugal,Ireland and Spain accounted for 9.3%,11.8% and 11.4% of GDP respectively in 2009,which was far beyond the upper limit of 3% provided in “Stability and Growth Pact” of EU. The proportions of the sovereign debt of these three countries to GDP were 75.2%,63.7% and 59.5% respectively,all approaching or exceeding the EU specified upper limit of 60%. Greece had so serious situation with the fiscal deficit accounting for 13.6% of GDP and up to 115.1% of the debt in GDP that it couldn’t repay the matured debt but getting into the debt crisis,weakening the cohesion of the Euro zone and the attractiveness of the Euro and stirring the foreign exchange and stock markets of European or even the globe.