Explaining the financial crisis

Goh Eng Yeow explains why the credit crunch is out of control.

By Goh Eng Yeow
Markets Correspondent
engyeow1@sph.com.sg

 

IT IS not surprising to find that many people in Singapore still fail to understand the nature of the grave financial crisis confronting the US and Europe.

Take this email which I had received from a reader after writing a column lamenting that the lack of strong leadership to tackle the global credit crunch crisis.

I had mentioned that taking a personal loan is still a breeze for many of us. 

Back to primitive banking

Goh Eng Yeow on the side-effects of a global credit crunch on S'pore banks.

By Goh Eng Yeow
Markets Correspondent
engyeow1@sph.com.sg

 

THE great credit crunch crisis in the United States and Europe has sent analysts here into over-drive, writing bearish reports on the local banks.

Some are moaning that the well-capitalised local banks prefer to hoard their billions, and not lend it out on the interbank market.

That was why short-term interbank interest rates more than doubled from 1 per cent in August to 2.23 per cent last Friday.

Stay cool as markets unravel

Goh Eng Yeow advises trigger-happy traders to keep their cool.

By Goh Eng Yeow
Markets Correspondent
engyeow1@sph.com.sg

 

REJECTION of a US$700 billion bailout package for financial institutions by US lawmakers has sent stock markets reeling across the world on Tuesday morning.

Regional bourses such as Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney have each fallen by up to 5 or 6 per cent, with heavy falls in financial institutions dragging down their bank-dominated indexes, in a knee-jerk reaction to Wall Street's worst-ever one-day point plunge of 778 points.

Traders in Asia can only watch helplessly in horror at the high drama unfolding in the United States, as two banking giants - Washington Mutual and Wachovia - were rescued in the

Is China’s economy slowing too?

Goh Eng Yeow worries that the US financial contagion may have hit China.

By Goh Eng Yeow
Markets Correspondent
engyeow1@sph.com.sg

 

MANY traders are hiding at the sidelines today, as they await the difficult passage which US lawmakers are expected to give the US$700 billion rescue package for financial institutions which will make its passage through Congress tonight. For me though, a more worrying sign on the horizon is the steep drop in the Baltic Dry Index which tracks the costs of shipping commodities.

In the past two months, it had been falling almost daily. Then last week, the losses accelerated. On Friday alone, it fell 10 per cent. With this plunge, it is now 70 per cent below its May