A decade after the devastating 2007-2008 financial crisis, every last one of the world’s major economies is finally posting positive economic growth figures. India’s economy is going gangbusters, with forecasts predicting 7.5% growth in 2017-2018, potentially outstripping China’s growth of 6.9% in 2017.

It’s not just the developing world that’s booming. France has posted its best economic figures since 2011; Spain (despite the crisis in Catalonia) is on track to be one of the strongest-performing European economies; Germany’s 2018 growth forecast has reportedly been revised upwards from 1.9% to 2.4%; Italy, despite a challenging political environment, has seen IMF forecasts revised up from 1.1% to 1.4%. Even Britain, shrugging off worst of the Brexit predictions, is chugging along nicely.

A decade after the 2007-2008 financial crisis, is the world economy finally back on track? Can this growth be sustained? Some economists are warning that high levels of global debt are a serious concern, and point to parallels with the situation just before the financial crisis a decade ago.

Others point with alarm to growing levels of inequality. The charity Oxfam has been campaigning against the so-called “inequality crisis”, arguing that 1% of the world’s population took over 80% of the world’s wealth in 2017. How long can this trend continue before it leads to serious political instability?

Ten years after the financial crisis, do you feel safer? Has the global economy finally recovered? Let us know your thoughts and comments in the form below and we’ll take them to policymakers and experts for their reactions!

IMAGE CREDITS: CC / Flickr – Jeanne Menjoulet


59 comments Post a commentcomment

What do YOU think?

  1. avatar
    Douglas Pryde

    On the verge of another one in Germany inflated house prices way beyond what any young person can afford, what will happen when interest rates rise?

  2. avatar
    Vytautas Vėžys

    Sure… After changing currency to Euro all prices went up 3.45 times. How does that makes us feel safer?

    • avatar
      Vytautas Vėžys

      Panagiotis Dimisianos Yep… Prices went up 3,4 times… Income went up 10%… Thats why 1/3 of country working population already left looking for better life…

    • avatar
      Claudio Gamao

      Welcome to the club. Next time, read carefully the small letters.

    • avatar
      Vytautas Vėžys

      Claudio Gamao All “Nazis and russian spies” warned that this will happen, but no, every politician, economist and shop owner told that this could neverhappen in free market that will open in single currency market…

      And about “small letters” all politician admitted that nobody read all pages of few hundred “Joining EU” treaty before voting for it. Not like we are electing them to do it or something…

    • avatar
      Tarquin Farquhar

      @Ivan Burrows
      Well said!

  3. avatar
    Peter

    Who benefits from ‘economic growth’. I see people getting paid more ….. maybe but working longer hours and paying more for basics such as a roof over their head. Truth is that economic growth benefits people who lend money to States not ordinary citizens. That’s the first world! The rest continue to be exploited to feed our lifestyles. Lucky the few who can live ‘off grid’ for whom there is more to life than ‘economic growth’.

  4. avatar
    Claudio Gamao

    Being raped by ECB, IMF and eurogroup, talking about safety sounds just funny.
    P.S. i am Greek.

  5. avatar
    Peter Thomas

    Yes. At least from the perspective of Portugal, which saw worrying brain drain during the period that the country was tarred as one of the ‘PIIGS’ countries. In the two main cities (Lisbon, Porto), there are long overdue investments in the historic centres and infrastructure, and a national tendency towards doom-and-gloom (fado, saudade feelings) is gradually being replaced with a feelgood atmosphere. The challenge remains to spread investment into the interior, where depopulation is a worry, and to encourage more pan-Iberian and pan-European thinking. Sadly, an again-booming Spain – the key interlocutor for development – is being held back a little by the uncertainty of Catalan separatism. It will be interesting whether a redynamised (Macron-Merkel) Europe will seek increased engagement with North Africa: Maghreb economies are growing quickly, and there are opportunities for increased trade along the Southern Mediterranean, especially for cooperation in renewables, infrastructure and agriculture.

  6. avatar
    Michail Paraskevas

    Safe? Not only there is no safety, but we saw how the banksters with the help of corrupt governments cannibalize weaker members of the EU, while showing that they are the exact opposite of allies. Instead of European solidarity, common borders etc, the EU pampers Turkey, doesn’t have a firm policy on borders and recognizes a fake failed Albano-bulgarian slavic state called FYROM. This way they spit on history and science just in order to make profit from the European distiller of heroin in the Balkans. Shame on you! At the same time they created racist headlines to enforce destabilization of people unity which is what the EU was supposed to enforce! SIEG HEIL, MERKEL 4TH REICH!

  7. avatar
    Virginia Agapidou

    Safer?Wishful thinking.

  8. avatar
    catherine benning

    Ten years after the financial crisis, do you feel safer?

    Women being exploited like never before, as they are repeatedly told not to expect to raise their children themselves, as that deed, for women, is a deadbeat life. Hence the average women needs three jobs to stay with a roof over her head in order to pay enormous fees to have child minders, who cannot speak the language and have very little or no idea how to raise children with any sense of self esteem and aspiration. Let alone able to speak our language without a strange stilted and choking accent.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2007063/Still-think-theyre-safe-nursery-As-mothers-rely-childcare-disturbing-investigation.html

    You have brought horror to our countries with your lack of any kind of knowledge of human behaviour. Mass murder and rape on a daily basis in our towns and cities. Failing schools, a health service out of control. Pretend and bribed dopes who play the role of leaders of our nation all under your control. You are the puppets of Globalists who intend to have us broken in slavery.

    Why are your bank thieves not in jail? Why are those who stole from the tax payers, via their fraudulent money manipulation, not incarcerated for life? How could Juncker have been thought fit for office, after his criminal behaviour was exposed in Luxemberg?

    Feel safer? Feel more insecure than ever you mean. And it is that kind of fear you rely on to keep yourself in power. Threats of more poverty is a trick learned by politicians over the centuries.

    http://www.alamongordo.com/eu-on-the-brink-of-economic-collapse/

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/12/christine-lagarde-imf-chief-in-court-over-400m-payout-to-french-tycoon

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/811164/Jean-Claude-Juncker-European-Union-Commission-Lux-Leaks-scandal

    Here is the Leader we British need desperately. Trustworthy, traditional and with a genuine love of Britain and its history and people. He knows exactly where he is going and will take us happily with him. Out of this treasonous farce we presently find ourselves drowning in.

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/911984/Brexit-news-latest-UK-EU-Jacob-Rees-Mogg-Theresa-May-Jeremy-Corbyn-Conservative-Party-lead

    Leaders within the EU must have lost their minds asking this question on here today, whilst knowing full well how dreadfully European citizens are suffering. You must be taking the p–s.

    Robbing nations of their total cultural identity. Torturing Europeans with wide, all consuming austerity, in order to fatten bankers and company leaders, who in turn fatten you through he back door. Then, drown us in mass immigration from outside our borders to finish us off entirely. And whilst doing it, pat yourselves on the back with annual prizes. All dropped on us like a nuclear bomb. Without one vote being asked for permission to use these treacherous policies against our people.

    Feel safer? Please!

    • avatar
      randomguy2017

      Well said. Peoples support for EU is falling. But the people in power dont care,
      they want their project, and to ruin old culture and then replace native Europeans,
      while the evils get richer.

    • avatar
      EU Reform- Proactive

      Cuckoo?

      The EU bliss remains dis-proportionally tilted towards its supranational political structures and its loyal servers who continually feather their nests- like: guaranteed employment until early retirement age and ever increasing pensions till death doth them part from such paradise.

      Never ever guaranteed ONLY for the duration of being elected into office!

      The eternal “equality lie” is, that voters feed them like the parasitic cuckoo chick gets fed by its host- without realizing it. Come the next election these voters opt to repeat the process- “habitually”- as being hypnotized by higher forces.

      http://www.nature.com/news/1999/990128/full/news990128-4.html

  9. avatar
    Jude De Froissard

    After the crisis? …why, is it over…? Maybe there is no crisis for business…but there still is a huge crisis for people.

  10. avatar
    Anonymous

    After the crisis? …why, is it over…? Maybe there is no crisis for business…but there still is a huge crisis for the people .

  11. avatar
    randomguy2017

    Neoliberalism and Neoconservativism must be eliminated.

    The ultra rich have way to much power. They pretend to work for Europeans or whoever. They keep getting richer. While Middle Class class is falling (say in USA) or stagnant. Poor are still Poor.

    You keep collecting that debt, especially countries like Germany, France, UK, Luxembourg who have massive debt. But hey as long as the Rothschilds, Schiffs, Warburgs, Soros, Adelsons, are on your side nothing to worry about.

    Just keep sucking up to US, and hoping all those bailouts, and establishment stay in power.

    Wish all those Grand Orient, Scottish Rite, Bnai Brith, York Rite and money people were removed from power. But hey they care more about Judaism and Islam than Europeans or Christianity.

  12. avatar
    Raquel Pereira

    Same horrendous, lowest quality politicians in the EU in key places, slightly different policies – thank you Britain for forcing the change – . So: NO.

  13. avatar
    Vanda Cal

    Não tenho conhecimentos para falar de economia , mas sinto um aperto no peito, como que um alarme, quando ouço na televisão que estamos muito bem e a subir, e novamente o preço do imobiliário aumentar . No microcosmos onde me movimento não são esses os sinais. E continuo a ver as pessoas gastarem acima das suas reais possibilidades .

  14. avatar
    Steve

    The money grid keeps expanding while the rest work longer hours for less money. It’s only a matter of time when the sleepy giant wakes.

  15. avatar
    Yolanda

    We don’t feel safer here in Greece with so low wages for young people.

  16. avatar
    Diana Erhardt

    It’s not crises, it’s the system. There’s no crises for the rich. Their businesses are very healthy and they are very well organized to assure you it’s only a temporary crises.

  17. avatar
    Alex Sascha

    Euro is not only a currency is a governance, it’s the capital destroing everything in its path

  18. avatar
    Harry Dempsey

    What about ireland ,forced to bailout 42 percent of failed eu banks, including German and French banks. Forced into a 200billion euro bank, a bank debt we did not incur. And threatened with financial destruction, if we did not comply to your demands . Thousands of Irish people homeless, living in emergency accommodation, thousands of people depending on charity food parcels, soup kitchens, Irish children going to bed and school hungry. TIME FOR IREXIT

  19. avatar
    ironworker

    No way, actually who is responsible for 2008 crisis? Things in the world have to change dramatically, and nothing so far changed.

  20. avatar
    Nuno Teixeira Castro

    Hell no.
    We have no European union; we have European countries moving in multiple speed, some in fast lanes, most of the other in a very slow lanes.
    First of all: is it possible to live with unfair competition taxes?
    The poor countries with higher tax rates to families versus the richer countries with fiscal paradises for companies?

  21. avatar
    Mario Kurzio Scortichini

    after????? here in Italy the crisis NEVER ended, hello. and no, I am not feeling safer at all. we get screwed by corrupted politicians on a daily basis. We are under some sort of “economic dictatorship”, our salaries are stuck to 2003 but prices have been increasing constantly ever since. as a fact nowadays we are a hell of a poor country.

  22. avatar
    Kaj Leers

    When discussing this, I think it is absolutely necessary to have the right discussion based on facts. There is, for instance, no point in blaming ‘Europe’ – i.e., the continent – for ills in individual nation states. When you blame ‘Europe’, you’re blaming a map. If you mean to say that the European Union is to blame for certain problems, we first have to see whether there is merit to blaming the EU.

    Sadly, the European Union as an organization does not have the power – yet – to change many things when it comes to national policy in countries. The national governments largely decide economic policy, whether it be on a formal or an informal level.

    Do not make the mistake of thinking that all EU nation states agree on everything. Also, the EU as a body politic does not have much power – it only has the power that is given to it by the nation states, who are paying for everything, after all.

    This means that, if you live in a European country that is a member of the EU and you don’t feel safe, by far most of the blame for that lies with your national government and your national political parties. They decide how much money goes to welfare, how much is invested in education, how much is used to boost economic growth and investment.

    Now. As for whether I feel ‘safer’: the immediate threat to the economic welfare of most nations may now have subsided – even Greece is doing somewhat better – but that does not mean that we’re out of the woods. Unfortunately, many countries took on debts from the private sector in order to prevent an economic meltdown. The interest rates – the only tool available to the ECB and central banks to tweak the economy – are at record lows. In order to boost the economy, the ECB has been buying up bad debt and injecting fresh money into markets and sectors.

    In my view, it is national governments who have been kicking the can down the road, cutting government expenditure even further in the midst of the crisis and not reforming their economies out of electoral fear. Ask yourself: why is youth unemployment in (for instance) Spain and Italy double that of countries like The Netherlands or Ireland?

    So, no, I don’t feel ‘safer’. If a new financial crisis should hit us now, central banks hardly have any instruments left to intervene while many nations already have high public debt.

  23. avatar
    Antonia vasiliades

    Where exactly is all this money ,why can’t a working person see it?

  24. avatar
    Yannis Fotakis

    No safer .. …Greek crisis continues due to the choices of the ruling regime of SYRIZANEL …Europe is not responsible, but our own choices and “resistance” policies against the Memorandum …

  25. avatar
    Jorge

    Safe? With this system? Not a chance. The so called “crysis” will keep happening until the system implodes, for good.
    We can’t have continuous, endless growth in a finite world. Just not possible.

  26. avatar
    Anonymous

    Is that a joke? Feel safer in this EU, the Irish people being forced under direct threat from the ECB into paying 60+ billion euros of debt for defunct European bank the Irish people had no dealings with at all, primarily to secure the solvency of the European banking system.
    Our children enslaved for generations to come because we are forced to pay a total disproportionate share of the entire European banking debt!
    We have the biggest homeless crisis in the history of our state and our government must go to Brussels to ask permission to fiddle with the fiscal treaty in order to build houses on our own soil.
    But hey no permission required from our EU overlords for us to cough up another billion plus PESCO / the EU war machine though.

    https://youtu.be/HAf7J4a_T1g

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