Video Transcript: Lesson 36
Okay, wrapping up Unit 12. We're going to look at the sources of spillovers from the U.S. financial crisis. Countries are linked through the flows across national borders of goods, services, labor, financial capital, and information. Countries do not exist in isolation, and these linkages imply that problems in one country can be transmitted to others. In the financial crisis of 2008, we can point to three broad channels of spillover from the United States to the rest of the world. One, within financial markets across borders, you can see that problems were undertaken there as well in their financial markets, global financial markets from financial markets into real markets in the United States, followed by real spillover across countries into their real markets. So the contagion effect through the market psychology. So the contagion effect, people's mindsets were kind of in panic because there was so much uncertainty across the globe. No one understood how it was going to be corrected or when things would get back to normal, and there was just a lot of uncertainty in the air. The first two linkages can be seen in the circular flow of income, in the figure on the next slide, the foreign sector and the circular flow. In this version of the circular flow, we highlight the interactions between a country and the rest of the world. So these interactions operate through the flow of goods and services and financial assets. During good times, they are a key part of the workings of the world economy. But during bad times, such as a financial crisis, these same links create channels for us for the sharing of the financial crisis. There are three international flows in the figure that we just saw: the foreign sector in the circular flow, one exports, households, firms, and the government in the rest of the world purchase goods and services produced in the home country. Two imports, households, and also firms and the government purchase goods and services produced in the rest of the world. Number three financial flows: financial intermediaries in the home country buy and sell financial assets. Flows from to from. to flows from or to the rest of the world. The net flow can go in either direction. The figure that we just stated, the foreign sector and the circular flow shows the case where there is a net flow of money into the home country.