The United States continues to harm the world economy, according to Xinhua News Agency's commentary: The 15 year crisis caused by the Lehman incident | Global | The United States

15 years ago today, American financial giant Lehman Brothers announced its application for bankruptcy protection, becoming the trigger for the US subprime mortgage crisis and triggering a global financial tsunami. Fifteen years later, as the damage caused to the world by the previous crisis has not yet fully dissipated, the United States follows a monetary policy of large-scale easing and rapid recovery, forcefully promoting decoupling and chain breaking, wielding sanctions, distorting the operation of the world economy, and endangering the recovery of the world economy.

Reflecting on the 2008 international financial crisis, the loose monetary policy of the United States provided a breeding ground for growth. The American supervision is backward and absent. Wall Street investment banks are obsessed with the business model of high leverage, high return and high risk, which has caused the expansion of the foam in the American capital market and eventually created a crisis sweeping the world. Fifteen years later, economic and financial governance issues in the United States remain prominent. Silicon Valley Bank in the United States collapsed in March this year, becoming the largest bank failure in the country since the previous crisis. Afterwards, the closure of signature banks and the First Republic Bank occurred in the United States, causing turbulence in the international financial market. The relaxation of regulatory requirements for small and medium-sized banks in the United States in 2018 has laid hidden dangers for this year's banking crisis, but the main reason for this banking crisis is the Federal Reserve's continued aggressive interest rate hikes.

In the past few years, in response to the impact of the COVID-19, the United States implemented aggressive monetary and fiscal "double easing" policies, pushing inflation to a 40 year high. In order to alleviate inflationary pressures, the Federal Reserve has initiated an aggressive interest rate hike cycle since March 2022, causing serious negative spillover effects on the world economy. Multiple non US currencies have depreciated significantly, and emerging markets are facing capital outflows. As a result, many central banks of countries have been forced to carry out "accompanying" interest rate hikes.

For a long time, the United States has used the hegemonic position of the US dollar in the international monetary system to shift domestic crises, harvest world wealth, and damage the economic and financial stability and public welfare of other countries. When the US monetary policy is in the expansion cycle, a large amount of capital flows to the world, boosting the asset price foam and earning high value-added income; When the US monetary policy enters a contraction cycle, capital flows back to the US, leaving the consequences of significant currency depreciation and asset price collapse to other countries.

Specifically, over the past year, the Federal Reserve has continued to raise interest rates. This "strong contraction" has led to the popularity of U.S. dollar assets such as treasury bond bonds, so that the United States can absorb the return of U.S. dollars at an extremely low cost. The scale of US government debt has been climbing year after year, and debt farce has repeatedly occurred. The alarm of US debt peaking continues to sound, and the response is debt monetization. By issuing a large amount of US dollars to directly repay external debt and dilute the burden of external debt, the essence is to cut off other countries' "leeks" and make countries around the world pay for the US economy and financial problems. The United States also regards the US dollar as a geopolitical weapon, frequently wielding sanctions and resorting to measures such as freezing assets, obstructing transactions, and extending jurisdiction over other countries, which seriously undermines the international order and threatens economic and financial stability.

After the outbreak of the 2008 international financial crisis, countries have taken measures to respond while strengthening international cooperation, improving financial regulation, and promoting global economic governance reform. It is international cooperation that prevented the global financial crisis from escalating into the Great Depression, which is an important experience learned by the international community in dealing with this crisis. But more than a decade later, facing the sluggish global economic recovery, the United States resorted to decoupling and chain breaking, promoting so-called "risk reduction", leading to a backlash in global cooperation.

After 15 years of Lehman's "death", the United States still suffered from the world's economic misdeeds.