Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the Telegraph's international business editor, has followed the global financial crisis from the credit crunch to the eurozone debt crisis. Here is a selection of news and views from his stories, blogs and columns over the past five years.
9 August, 2007: Dow crashes 387 as contagion spreads after the European Central Bank provides emergency liquidity to the credit markets for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, acting to prevent contagion from the US sub-prime mortgage slump spreading through the German, French, and Dutch banking systems.Anybody who has been on holiday has come back to face a different world. It's the Wild West right now," said David Bloom, chief currency strategist at HSBC. "Investors can't decide whether we're looking at a fundamental crisis."
22 December, 2007: Crisis may make 1929 look a 'walk in the park'
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Ambrose: The risk for Britain – as property buckles – is a twin banking and fiscal squeeze. The UK budget deficit is already 3 per cent of GDP at the peak of the economic cycle, shockingly out of line with its peers.
Maastricht rules may force the Government to raise taxes or slash spending into a recession. This way lies crucifixion. The UK current account deficit was 5.7 per cent of GDP in the second quarter, the highest in half a century. Gordon Brown has disarmed us on every front.
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Ambrose: The ECB's little secret is that it must never allow a Northern Rock failure in the eurozone because this would expose the reality that there is no EU treasury and no EU lender of last resort behind the system. Would German taxpayers foot the bill for a Spanish bail-out in the way that Kentish men and maids must foot the bill for Newcastle's Rock? Nobody knows. This is where eurozone solidarity stretches to snapping point. It is why the ECB has showered the system with liquidity from day one of this crisis.
