The Chronicle of Financial Turmoil

Historically financial crises are as old as Capitalism and can be traced from the 17 th century onwards; Dutch tulip mania (1636-37) and the South Sea Bubble (1719-20) are the harbingers. The dominant factor of commonality of all financial crises is that they have often arrived with brutal force irrupted from the financial excesses indulged by the banking / financial sectors and left with important lessons which are plausibly forgotten with the passage of time. All the crises have devastated the overall economic and social fabric of the Society because it always resulted into sudden contraction of output and employment in general, followed by steep fall in real income and investment plus capital flight. Moreover the credibility of economic policies is ruined.

 

The Great Depression of 1929 which had originated in US close on the heels of the stock market crash, quickly turned into a worldwide economic slump given the distinct and intimate economic relationships already forged between the US and European economies after World War I. It was an unparalleled economic devastation, the world economy had ever experienced. Since then it is always being used as a bench mark while gauging other crises The Asian financial crisis had gushed out from the collapse of Thai baht in July 1997, quickly spread across East Asia, then wreaked havoc in the regional economies and spilled over to Latin American and East European economies in the following year. The financial turmoil which surfaced in August 2007 in the US financial markets blew into an unprecedented crisis engulfing the international money, credit, equity and foreign exchange markets. It was billed as the worst since the Great Depression that originated in the advanced economies and rapidly engulfed the whole world.

 

This book is a vivid account of various major financial and economic crises suffered by world economies / regions in modern times. It also focuses on what are the policy lessons should be learned from past experiences to prevent future financial/economic upheavals in an interdependent globalised economy where goods, services, human resources, capital, technology are fairly crossing the borders for economic development through shared prosperity. The objective of the present book is to deliver an in-depth account of what is well known as well as what is veiled about these significant crises in a lucid language.

 

It is acknowledged that all the sources of references, both national and international publications have facilitated to distil the essence of the literature into a compact volume bristling with finer interpretations of the fruitful information that could be encountered on the academic highway.

 

It is obvious that this book will serve as an essential companion at university graduate and post graduate levels and as a reference guide for research scholars in international economics, business and commerce. But it is an asset for professionals in international business to understand the open macroeconomic policy dimensions and its impact on international trade, finance and investments in a digitized service led economies.The author is an Indian national, who has graduated in Economics, post graduated in Foreign Trade and pursued PhD in International finance. He has more than 35 years of rich commercial experience in the domain of International business, global shipping and logistics at diverse functional levels.

 

Further he has 50+ research publications in various edited books / peer reviewed / indexed national and international journals / special editions / other publications pertained to international economics, trade, finance, global shipping & logistics etc. at hand and many of these research findings are apparently reflected in this book. His research Papers are presented in International conferences and also been invited as Panelist.

 

At present, he is engaged as an Advisor – International Business, Shipping & Logistics and as Visiting Professor in various Business Management Schools.