RBA Stevens: Producing Prosperity

From rba.gov.au

Thank you for the invitation to join you for your Annual Dinner. Financial markets and policymakers have been living in a more or less continual state of anxiety for over five years. While it was poor-quality lending in the US mortgage market that proved to be a key cause of problems, from quite early on it became apparent that European banks also had serious difficulties, because of their exposure to securities of doubtful quality, their high leverage and their need to fund US dollar portfolios on a short-term basis. It was in August 2007 that those acute funding difficulties first became apparent in European ... (full story)