Impact Of The Economic Disruptions Caused By The Global Financial Crisis Essay

The success of a business depends on its ability to remain profitable over the long term, while being able to pay all its financial obligations and earning above average returns for its shareholders. This is made possible if the business is able to maximize on available opportunities and very efficiently and effectively use the resources it has to create maximum value for all involved stakeholders. One way the performance of a company can be measured on critical areas such as profitability, its ability to stay solvent, the amount of debt exposure and the effectiveness in resource utilization, is performing financial analysis where a set of ratios provides a snapshot of company performance and future

This research paper is prepared for purposes of assessing financial condition as well as overall operating performance of two same sector entities.

Resilience is a term that is often applied to those who have faced hardship and viewed the experience in a positive light as an opportunity to grow and change for the better (Wagnild & Collins, 2009). The definition however seems to vary from place to place. Ungar et al. (2008) stated “definitions of resilience are ambiguous when viewed across cultures" (p.174) which is why the understanding of resilience may be difficult to capture (as cited in Windle, Bennett & Noyes, 2011). Although the literature agrees on several common themes about resilience there are many varying opinions on how to define the concept or the attributing factors. Earvolino-Ramirez (2007) and

• Resilience: How robust is the company? Does it have the potential to withstand inflation, higher interest rates, a rise in fuel prices etc.?

Several financial ratios can be considered when looking at a company’s economic performance. However, given all the possibilities it is important to focus on a few key areas that are functionally related. Therefore, for the purpose of analyzing Halliburton’s financial position as well as its competitors, some common ratios can be used such as current ratio, debt-to-total assets, inventory turnover, average collection period, net profit margin, and return on total assets (ROA).

The 2008 financial meltdown resulted in the most treacherous investment landscape observed since the great depression. The most notorious issue was the subprime mortgage crisis, which had a ripple effect felt through every market in the world. The banks, whose leverage rate should never have been higher than two times capitalization, surged as high as thirty to forty times market cap. With this level of exposure, any unforeseen market fluctuations could mean disaster. Lehman Brothers, the oldest investment bank on Wall Street, went bankrupt and thousands lost their jobs. Outside of finance, thousands of companies in the United States and abroad had to fire significant portions of their workforce, thus furthering the economic decline and plunging the US into an economic recession. In the late 1990s, Congress repealed the legislation separating commercial and investment banks, which resulted in investment banks overreaching their bounds. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was enacted due to the effects of the subprime mortgage crisis, which allowed the US Treasury to spend billions of dollars to bail out the investment banks by purchasing distressed assets. However, the bailout plan has created a debate over whether it was a good idea for the government to bailout the investment banks. Also, if the government fared better or worse in the years following the bailout.

It is difficult to quantify exactly how much revenue a bank generates from proprietary trading, one brokerage analyst estimated that 5%-10% of trading done by large banks is a result of trading not done on behalf of the client.32 These investments are the reason Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., a global financial services firm, failed. The firm participated in investment banking, equity, fixed-income sales, research, trading, investment management, private equity, and private banking. At one time, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., was a primary dealer in the United States Treasury securities’ market. In 1998, 25% of Lehman’s revenue was generated from proprietary trades.33 The company, at this time, held $28 billion in securities and other

The company’s performance on these dimensions shall be measured through financial ratios analysis. As there are many variations of ratios available to measure more or less the same aspect of performance, I have short-listed, in the following table, the key ratios that will be utilized in the analysis:

The 2008 financial crisis can be traced back to two factor, sub-prime mortgages and debt. Traditionally, it was considered difficult to get a mortgage if you had bad credit or did not have a steady form of income. Lenders did not want to take the risk that you might default on the loan. In the 2000s, investors in the U.S. and abroad looking for a low risk, high return investment started putting their money at the U.S. housing market. The thinking behind this was they could get a better return from the interest rates home owners paid on mortgages, than they could by investing in things like treasury bonds, which were paying extremely low interest. The global investors did not want to buy just individual mortgages. Instead, they bought

The Global Financial Crisis, also known as The Great Recession, broke out in the United States of America in the middle of 2007 and continued on until 2008. There were many factors that contributed to the cause of The Global Financial Crisis and many effects that emerged, because the impact it had on the financial system. The Global Financial Crisis started because of house market crash in 2007. There were many factors that contributed to the housing market crash in 2007. These factors included: subprime mortgages, the housing bubble, and government policies and regulations. The factors were a result of poor financial investments and high risk gambling, which slumped down interest rates and price of many assets. Government policies and regulations were made in order to attempt to solve the crises that emerged; instead the government policies made backfired and escalated the problem even further.

The company will determine its financial health using its financial performance and financial position. This is shown by the profitability statement for the year under review, and its financial statement. The performance and financial position are measured using the accounting ratios. The raw data from the income statements for the four years 1009, 2010 and 2011 indicate progressive improvement over time. The table below illustrates the observation.

In 2008, the world experienced a tremendous financial crisis which is rooted from the U.S housing market. Moreover, it is considered by many economists as one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression in 1930s. After bringing a huge effect on the U.S economy, the financial crisis expanded to Europe and the rest of the world. It ruined economies, crumble financial corporations and impoverished individual lives. For example, the financial crisis has resulted in the collapse of massive financial institutions such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and AIG. These collapses not only influenced own countries but also international scale. Hence, the intervention of governments by changing and expanding the monetary

The United States has seen this situation before and survived; but not without change. Any solution to the current financial crisis will need to include the three players; individuals, banks, and the government. All three will also need to be held accountable. Many individuals have stepped beyond their personal means, financial institutions have acted with blatant neglect, and so far the government has in essence stood by and supervised the entire show. Capitalism is the American ideal, but unchecked and immoral capitalism leads to collapse through greed. No solution will be easy and America will suffer regardless of what is done, though some action must be taken.

The financial crisis of 2007/2008 had a negative impact on the UK economy, resulting in low growth and high level of unemployment while inflation constantly remained above the 2% target. In those extraordinary circumstances focus of monetary policy had to be on growth rather than reaching inflation target, resulting in gradual reduction of the Bank rate from 5.75% in middle of 2007 to its lowest level of 0.5% in the beginning of 2009 (BoE, 2014). Although, a low interest rate led to significant depreciation of sterling, a tightening policy at that time would be a major mistake, that could lead to deflation and depression, rather than recovery and inflation around target (Fisher, 2014). Despite any effort pursued by monetary policy there was not only sign of the economic recovery. Moreover, the conditions deteriorated, with negative GDP figure, high level of unemployment and inflation rate remained above the target the economy was in recession. The conventional measures used by the MPC to stimulate economic growth proved to be inefficient, and the risk to fall into triple-dip recession remained. In order to provide additional stimulus into economy, the Bank had to make a decision on implementing unconventional measures. In January 2009, the Bank set up an Asset Purchase Facility to buy high-quality assets with the aim to improve liquidity and credit condition. The MPC purchased £200 billion of financial assets during period between March and November 2009. Although GDP figure

Research has explored resilience at multiple levels including individual, system, firm, industry, and country. We show the key factors affecting firm resilience in Table 2. In this paper, we concentrate on testing the impact of learning (Vogus & Sutcliffe, 2007) and increased organizational preparedness (Czinkota et al., 2010; Fowler, Kling, & Larson, 2007) in response to extreme events (Henry & Ramirez-Marquez, 2012).