Recession 2008 - What if?

[ripvanwinkle]

Last weekend I went to a gathering of friends and we started to commiserate about how we were affected by the crash. Three got laid off, one couple had to move back in with the parents. I managed to survive rather unscathed except for my investments of course. I still had a job. 

We started wondering. Our crash had a cascade effect on Europe and other countries markets but what if the had crash started in Europe or Asia first? What if the Europe/Asia banks and stock markets took the crash first and not us? Would their governments had acted like ours did. Would we have been hurt as bad?

But has anyone done a "What if" scenario on this?

[mollyc]

I tried a Google search.  I can find articles indicating that European banks had "overstretched leveraging positions" that made them vulnerable to the US crisis.  However, I can't find any speculation of anything internal that would have triggered their crisis anyway.  I like "What if" scenarios.  This one would have been interesting.

It's been a while so I may just not remember.  Didn't all of the Governments except Iceland's basically handle the crisis the same way?  Give financial institutions and some big businesses funds so they didn't crash?

I believe the US would still have had its own crisis because it was caused internally.  I don't know alot about economics but what I've read about this time makes me believe it would have been as bad anyway.

[Value Buy]

The theory has always been promoted that when tha U.S. catches a cold, the world economies have the flu or worse and if it started over there, we would be immune to a large falloff. 
In today's world since we import so much product from overseas and the banking systems as well as stock and bond markets are traded all over the world we seem more interconnected then ever before. If Asia and Europe catch a cold, I think we could get hurt, which then hurts the rest of the world even more.

[Bob Ross]

It's greed, fear, and the self-fulfilling prophecies of mob mentality that are the main driving forces.

So it's very likely that trouble overseas would have some ripple effect here.  Past examples have been when someone sneezed in Greece, and when someone stubbed their toe in Italy.