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...There are only handful of people who understand the workings of the global financial system as well as Greenberg," a Democratic committee staffer says. "He can provide some very valuable insight into what went wrong worldwide in the current financial crisis and how it can be fixed and what the government ought to do to stabilize things...
...professor of management and co-director of the International Motor Vehicle Program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. U.S. auto and light-truck sales topped 16 million for eight years and reached nearly 17 million in 2004 and 2005. Those numbers have slumped dramatically, but the current downturn is cyclical, says MacDuffie; there's no evidence of permanent decline in the demand for vehicles. (See pictures of the world's cheapest...
...Using the industry metric, which estimates that about three-quarters of current sales are replacement vehicles, demand will push past 13 million cars by 2012. O.K., so assume that some people will drive less, run their cars into the ground or - gulp - give up driving. You still don't lose much. What's known in the industry as "density" - the ratio of vehicles to drivers - continues to increase...
...even possible, despite the current bleakness, that car sales will return to an upward trend this year. The prices of some used cars are beginning to rise as supplies tighten, which makes new cars a more attractive deal. Any improvement in the homebuilding industry bodes well for light-truck sales. And if Congress passes a proposed cash-for-clunker bill that would give car owners a $3,000-to-$5,000 voucher to trash their old vehicles and buy something new and shiny, dealers will move the metal, as they have done already in Europe...
...Largely left out, however, is the vital role that trade balances played in igniting the crisis in the first place. Since the late 1990s, the U.S. has been spending far more than it has earned, sending huge sums of capital overseas, a dynamic measured as the current account deficit. This "giant pool of money," as the radio program This American Life described it, did not stay in low-spending surplus countries like China or oil-producing states. Instead, much of it came back to the U.S. in the form of cheap credit. "Like water seeking its level, saving flowed from...