Introduction
Last week’s column indicated that, during the coming weeks, I would be assessing the present state of the global crisis, which began in 2008. In that column I also sought to briefly identify the core elements of the global crisis. Additionally I sought to establish that the present crisis could only be properly assessed after taking into account the negative effects of its immediate precursor that is, the highly inflationary food and fuel price-induced crisis of 2007-2008. That precursor crisis had several negative impacts, particularly in poor developing countries where explosive social and political eruptions took place. These events dramatized the highly destructive and rapid transmission of the negative effects of high food and fuel prices across the world, especially in the main the developing areas.
The global crisis that emerged in 2008 had multiple transmission channels, which produced even greater hardship than that which occurred during 2007-2008. It would be useful therefore, in this week’s column to observe each of these transmission channels before
