Identifying the economic woes of the United States is crucial. But we should also understand that other countries are also grappling with bankrupt companies and shrinking economies. Many countries are also implementing their own stimulus plans. What are some of the examples used by bloggers around the world when they discuss the bubble economies, bailout of banks and stimulus plans of their countries? Bubbles The global effect of the bursting of the bubble economies in the developed world was sudden and devastating. For example, Jamaica’s dollar-earning bauxite industry has shed hundreds of jobs already because of the downturn in US car production. In Bangladesh, the housing bubble is tied to the reliance of the country to the remittances sent by overseas workers. Now that migrant workers are returning home because of mass layoffs in Europe and US, the property boom in Bangladesh has come to an end: The diaspora Bangladeshis have sent remittance of almost 6.5 billion US dollars in 2007. There is no doubt that remittances are good for a country's economy. But it is the sad truth that most of these remittances are used in investing in unproductive assets like lands and apartments. Because liquidity chases assets, those diaspora workers will certainly want to invest in a secured asset. A huge sum of money is going after a tiny piece of land among limited land resources. So we have created our own bubble (like dotcom bubble). Everybody knows how the prices of lands and apartments shot up. The remittances are responsible for it. Cambodia is also experiencing a property bubble. South Koreans are Cambodia’s biggest investors. Since South Korean businesses have been badly hit by the financial crisis, many of them have already pulled off their real estate investments in Cambodia. Meanwhile, the Caribbean financial crisis originated in part from the sharp drop in methanol and real estate prices. In Antigua, the face of bank fraud is U.S. billionaire Allen Stanford who has been charged with investment fraud. Stanford has considerable investments in the Caribbean. For many months, the Brazilian government has claimed that the local impact of the economic crisis is only minimal. But recent reports have shown that Brazil is now the second most affected country by the crisis. Blogger Luiz explains why Brazil’s economy is vulnerable: Sim, o Brasil tem um mercado interno, mas não vive só dele. Vive, também, da exportação de seus produtos. A crise atingiu não apenas os Estados Unidos, mas também a União Européia. Dois grandes mercados brasileiros. Reduziu o crescimento na China, outro mercado importante. Romania’s lending bubble is familiar because it is almost the same credit bubble which burst in other rich nations. Political Cartoon by Sacrava from Cambodia Bailouts Many companies which asked for a bailout from governments were financial institutions. The response of some governments was to nationalize these money-losing firms. Bank nationalization schemes have been enforced in some countries like Iceland and Kazakhstan. Trinidad and Tobago banks were rescued not just by their government but also by governments from neighboring countries. Is nationalization a wise economic decision? Should bankrupt companies receive government assistance? The opinion of bloggers is divided: Barbados Free Press criticizes the lack of transparency concerning the decision to bailout the banks in the region: How much will Barbadian taxpayers eventually be on the hook for? Good luck finding out the truth because the amount of taxpayer money and concessions being given by Trinidad, Barbados and other countries is being kept secret from the taxpayers. Barbados Underground, reacting to the renewed government involvement in the financial sector, notes that this unorthodox thinking should generate a healthy debate: If in fact, “national financial institutions,” enhance the capacity of a national government to respond to crises in the financial services sector, the question may well be, not whether a country can afford a “national financial institution,” but whether it can afford not to have one. Such a perspective goes against my many years of training, but economic orthodoxy has been found so sorely lacking in this crisis that I am open to new ideas. New answers often require new questions and a willingness to engage in fresh open minded debate. Streetwise Professor from Russia disagrees that failing banks should be revived by the government: These are companies that should have been euthanized. No, let me correct that. They should have been terminated with extreme prejudice. Instead they are being revived, and pushed into doing the kinds of things that created the financial crisis in the first place.