Reply #8: Global Financial Assets Lost $50 Trillion Last Year, ADB Says

[Demeter]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=aZ1kcJ7y3LDM&refer=economy

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- The value of global financial assets including stocks, bonds and currencies probably fell by more than $50 trillion in 2008, equivalent to a year of world gross domestic product, according to an Asian Development Bank report.

Asia excluding Japan probably lost about $9.6 trillion, while the Latin American region saw the value of financial assets drop by about $2.1 trillion, said Claudio Loser, a former International Monetary Fund director and the author of the report that was commissioned by the ADB. The report didn’t give a breakdown of asset declines in other regions...



Global Recession

The global economy is likely to shrink for the first time since World War II, and trade will decline by the most in 80 years, the World Bank said yesterday. Its assessment is more pessimistic than an IMF report in January predicting 0.5 percent global growth this year.

Developing nations will bear the brunt of the contraction and they will face a shortfall of between $270 billion and $700 billion to pay for imports and service debts, the Washington- based World Bank said.

“This crisis is the first truly universal one in the history of humanity,” former IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus said at an ADB forum in Manila today. “No country escapes from it. It has not yet bottomed out.”....