"Red Star Spangled Banner" Scrutinizing the Root Causes of Financial Crisis

In this article we inquire into the root causes of the present financial crisis by drawing on a Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson trade model. At the origin of the current crisis are global imbalances originating from distortions in relative prices. Due to impasses in international production, financial repression in countries that seek to suppress real appreciation has resulted in excessive capital-intensive production and an expansion of financial service sectors in flexible market economies. Moreover, financial globalization has been a vehicle for exporting real appreciation pressures from catching-up economies to mature economies, thus aggravating global imbalances.