The collapse of the US Lehman Brothers bank two years ago, theworst financial disaster in history, was the official onset of afinancial and economic crisis that wreaked havoc in the entirebusiness world and brought down many companies and banks. Theeffects of the Lehman Brothers failure are felt even now, when theeconomies of the world are trying to find their way towardseconomic growth.
The real titans on the Wall Street and not only them, seen asinfallible, collapsed. It took intervention from states, paid forwith taxpayers' money, to keep big financial groups alive, whosemanagers had speculated depositors' money by getting into businessventures that did not generate physical, tangible value, andeverything was but a bet.
Even though in the beginning the crisis on the Wall Street wasthought to be something far-off, its effects were quick topropagate towards Romania, which was knocked-out in just a matterof months and learnt from the IMF that it had to take a 20billion-euro financial aid to survive and avoid bankruptcy.
Although it did take the biggest loan in history, Romania, runby President Traian Băsescu, Premier Emil Boc and NBR GovernorMugur Isărescu, has yet to rebound and is one step away from takinga new loan.
In the autumn of 2008 and early 2009, every official and topanalyst would say that Romania would not suffer too much as aresult of the events unfolding abroad. The reality would prove themwrong. In 2009 we had 7% economic decline, this year the economy isheaded towards a 2% decline and next year's forecasts, as muchabout growth as they may be, are already reason for doubt.
After the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Romania learnt it has arotten social system that cannot run on the low revenues collectedby the budget. Because pension raises were really big in 2007 andmany people were hired to work for central and local authorities,the government now has to borrow money every week to pay itsdues.
Yet the most painful thing of all was that the crisis dealt aheavy a blow to the private sector, which had started to grow in2004 and continued to do so until 2008. Ten billion euros' worth ofprivate businesses went insolvent and many Romanian businesspeopleare afraid now more than ever that they might go bankrupt for lackof cash to keep their business going.
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