MoStan Asia's Stephen Roach on the increasing frequency of financial crises

The crises are coming with greater frequency. Over the last 25 years we have had an average of one crisis every 3 years. The gap this time is 18 months. The scale is bigger. This is a much more serious problem in the eurozone than it was in the late 90s with the the Asian financial crisis.

~Stephen Roach, chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia, Bloomberg Radio interview, May 10th, 2010

Stephen Roach on US monetary policy

The only lesson the U.S. has learned from Japan is how to clean up the post-bubble mess. America has failed to learn the much more important lesson -- how to avoid dangerously destabilizing bubbles in the first place. The Greenspan/Bernanke ideology still places disproportionate emphasis on the former while ignoring the latter at great peril.


~ Stephen Roach, Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia, "Japan Ghosts of Bubbles Past Haunt U.S. in 2008", Bloomberg, January 6, 2008

Stephen Roach on US economy

This recession will be deeper than the shallow contraction earlier in this decade. The dot-com-led downturn was set off by a collapse in business capital spending, which at its peak in 2000 accounted for only 13 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The current recession is all about the coming capitulation of the American consumer — whose spending now accounts for a record 72 percent of G.D.P.

~ Stephen Roach, Asia Investment Chairman, New York Times, December 16, 2007