The Crash: Global Overview

I am referring to an economic disaster currently in progress. This disaster still has the (unrealized?) potential of dwarfing the Great Depression of the 1930's. The United States of America is still at risk of major economic damage from the Crash.

This disaster started having identifiable "features" in July 1997.

Nations that are especially ailing: [Estimated background color is explained below; substitute nation for U.S. in interpretation.]

Japan [The root of it all??]
Thailand [The first...]
Indonesia [The empire holds....]
Malaysia [Marathir is building a macroeconomic firewall i.e. the Malaysian Firewall against the Crash, and so far Malaysia has avoided the worst effects. Will the Malaysian Firewall hold?]
South Korea [The megachurches did not prevent this at all....]
Russia [Yes, Russian government bonds have defaulted....]
Ecuador [Will the real Ecuadorian government please shut down the fake Ecuadorian government?!?] ;(

formerly: "I'm Indonesizing! I'm Indonesizing!"
formerly: Unscheduled bank holidays??

Romania
China [While a controlled economy is difficult to interpret properly, it is plausible that a consistent deflation rate combined with mass GDP growth driven by public spending is not "ideal".]
Turkey [Political infighting floated the currency.]
Zimbabwe

EMERGENCY: If you live here, you don't need me to tell you that Zimbabwe is in a national emergency due to the Crash.
[Formerly: MAD without weapons in progress....]
[Formerly: Financing for critical infrastructure at risk....]

Argentina [Democratic default?]

Nations that seem to have recovered

Brazil [Used to be the eighth largest economy on Earth -- before its currency floated]

I will denote, by ALERT, a economic situation that has a reasonable worst-case scenario that physically endangers most, if not all, people in the U.S.

After two consecutive days with news failing to confirm the situation, I will downgrade the situation to ALERT. After one month with news failing to confirm the situation, I will consider the situation not an immediate threat. Days when the target organization is closed do not count.

There are no ALERT situations now.

Two ALERT have expired:

April 14, 2000: a positive-feedback loop has started. A general plunge in dot.com, Internet infrastructure, and financial stocks has caused massive margin calls. Both Dow and NASDAQ were severely affected. I'm not clear on whether the Dow circuit breakers were invoked....
May 27, 1999: a positive-feedback loop has started. The plunge in Internet stocks on the NYSE has identifiably started to cause margin calls. This causes sales of affected Internet stocks to cover the margin calls, which lowers Internet stock prices even more.... [Last news confirmation: June 3, 1999 [duration 4 market days]. This loop fizzled out on June 4, and was confirmed as terminated on June 7, 1999.]. This was canceled July 7, 1999.

Links

To see how I am tracking the Crash, please see the news subsection of my research links.

Resources related to coping with the Crash:

FDA U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration's consumer safety web site. Mostly oriented towards food preparation and preservation.
FEMA U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. Mostly oriented towards natural and man-made disasters.
USDA U.S. Department of Agriculture. Mostly oriented towards food preparation and preservation; some gardening information is reachable from here.
Noah's Ark, mirror, and another mirror. A wide variety of information here -- of varying quality, but mostly reliable. [The spell-checker usually detects problem information.]. A number of water purification methods [against microbes] are listed here -- more than I've seen anywhere else. This site is cross-listed in my Research page, under "Geological Information" and "Science at the Limit"

My thoughts about various aspects of the Crash:

Currency Markets, from a macroeconomic perspective.
Transparency International published their 1999 Corrupt Practices Index and Bribe Payers Index on October 26, 1999. Here's my reprint.

It seems that a Russian organized crime money laundering scheme (initially detected at the Bank of New York) has been generating amazing numbers of stories fit for these pages since August 24, 1999. In the interests of legibility, I will denote this by the ROCML Scheme@BNY . This (and other, similar schemes) probably initiated the Russian ruble collapse in August 1998.

World Trade Organization meeting 1999 [Nov. 30, 1999--Dec. 3, 1999] had violent protests.

Rather than document the invective between the Kenyan government and the World Bank [circa July 22, 2000], I'd rather reprint informed commentary from an African social scientist.

Unlike Itar-Tass, Western media

censored a (formerly?) imminent risk of World War III over the sinking of the Kursk in the Barents Sea, around August 12-13. This risk was aggravated by the Crash.

STRATFOR's analysis of oil supply through 2002. Not a good sign.
STRATFOR's explanation of how Euro weakness endangers the world macroeconomy.

Bank of International Settlements conference #8. Includes Peter Vlaar's paper referred to in the Mar. 9, 2001 entry.

The attacks on the World Trade Center, etc. by extremist Sunni Muslims on Sept. 11, 2001 have severely complicated my ability to monitor the Crash. The following news agencies are attempting to provide comprehensive coverage on the international response (and lack thereof): BBC, CNN, FoxNews (requires Flash), and Xinhua.

No-frame index