US media relatively mum on $1 trillion IMF report

Think of this as a precursor to Molly’s Friday Financials roundup (here): Yesterday the International Monetary Fund released its semi-annual Global Financial Stability Report, and the news was fairly staggering. The IMF now estimates the losses through the housing-induced US credit crunch will come to about $1 trillion. Quoting the authors: “The events of the past six months have demonstrated the fragility of the global financial system and raised fundamental questions about the effectiveness of the response by private and public sector institutions.”

The press response in the US is decidedly vague and sanguine compared to the reaction in the UK. Let’s compare.

Here are the wire summaries [1] [2] that readers of the New York Times got today.

And here are a pair of highly recommended pieces from today’s Guardian [1] [2].

Below the jump, an excerpt of Heather Stewart’s report in the Guardian (link #1 above).

Continued: Click “Read More”

As finance ministers and central bankers arrived in Washington to discuss ways of tackling the crisis, the IMF warned, in its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook, that governments might be forced to step in with more public bailouts of troubled banks and cash-strapped homeowners before the crisis was over.

“The financial market crisis that erupted in August 2007 has developed into the largest financial shock since the Great Depression, inflicting heavy damage on markets and institutions at the core of the financial system,” it said.

After warning this week that the world’s financial firms could end up shouldering $1trn (