Читать книгу The Road To Luxury - Blanckaert Christian - Страница 9

There were several economic crises during 1970s to 2014, starting with the oil crises in 1973 and 1979, the stock market crash in 1987, the 1992 Black Wednesday crash, and 1997's Asian financial crisis. The first 10 years of the twenty-first century also saw many crises. The stock markets collapsed in early 2000, following the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. In 2001 the world watched as the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington took place, followed by the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The early 2000s also saw a recession in many countries of the world, aggravated by the outbreak of SARS in Asia in 2003. In 2004, the tsunami in Asia killed hundreds of thousands. Finally, in 2007 the subprime mortgage crisis that began in the United States housing market spread all over the world and caused, among many other things, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the European debt crisis of 2011, which continues to have effects such as the Cyprus bailout and political turmoil in Russia and Italy.

Crisis can essentially be of four forms: (1) endogenous (inner), such as economic and financial crises; (2) exogenous (outer), such as a political crisis; (3) natural disasters; and (4) mixed characteristics. An economic crisis is one where the real economy, of one country or worldwide, experiences a significant slowdown. The gross domestic product consumption stagnates or shrinks, along with investments, capacity utilization, household incomes, company profits, and inflation, while bankruptcies and unemployment rates rise. Figure 1.1 shows periods of shrinking GDP between 1950 and 2013 using the example of the world's biggest economy, the United States.

Figure 1.1 Quarterly GDP Growth in the United States, 1950–2013 (in percent adjusted for inflation)

On the other hand a financial crisis is a sudden devaluation of assets, such as stocks or currencies, which may or may not have an effect on the real economy. In itself, a financial crisis only leads to the destruction of paper wealth. It has been observed that there is a reciprocal relationship with other types of crises, such as economic crises and political crises, which is the reason why financial crises generally lead to increased levels of caution within politics and the real economy. Examples of such financial crisis are the burst of the dot-com bubble, together with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the subprime crisis of 2007, and the ongoing Eurozone debt crisis facing the world, transforming from the private debt property bubble of 2008–2009 into the sovereign debt crisis of major banks and economies of Europe, in which the Dow Jones lost about 50 percent of its value. Other such crises that affected the world include the South American debt crisis of the 1980s, known as the “lost decade”; the Asian financial crisis of 1997; the Russian crisis of 1998; and the European debt crisis that started in 2010 and has taken an enormous toll until the present moment.

Like financial crisis, political crisis may affect the economy and have an effect on industries, including the luxury industry. Examples of political crises are the Cuban Missile crisis, the Falkland crisis, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the following intervention by the United States in 1990, and the terrorist attack in 2001. In 2011, the governments of Tunisia and Egypt were overthrown by revolutions and Libya saw a regime change after a civil war that was supported mainly by France and the United Kingdom. More recently in 2013, the election results of Beppe Grillo's Five Star movement in Italy combined with the EU's decision on tax issues in Cyprus have fueled disbelief in the democratic problem-solving capacity of the EU and its members.

Natural disasters such as the tsunami in Asia in 2004, the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that caused a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011, and the typhoon Bhopa in the Philippines in 2012 had devastating effects on the local economies.