Article Review #4

Recently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the international organization that is composed of 188 countries working to ensure financial cooperation and stability and facilitate international trade and economic growth, held their annual meeting to discuss recent trends in the world economy and international financial concerns. Something that Carmen Reinhart, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School, noticed about the meetings is that the primary concerns are no longer over countries with already established economies bouncing back from the huge international financial crisis of 2008, but rather concerns over countries with emerging economies who are facing financial crises of their own. Lately, emerging economies who were growing fast previously are now showing some of the main symptoms of a financial crisis: slowdown in economic growth/exports, reduction in capital inflows, etc. This relates back to the trend we have seen in previous article reviews pertaining to falling commodity prices. The global trend of falling commodity prices along with rising income rates means that the capital inflow that was supporting the growth of emerging economies has ended. The primary concern surrounding this is that China, a prominent emerging economy, has slowed down economically, and that has lead to an economic downturn in all emerging economies worldwide. Another huge concern that emerging economies are facing and that could lead to a financial crisis are hidden debts, which are debts that aren’t always as obvious on the surface but morph from one crisis to another, meaning that is hard to detect them until it's already too late.