Global economic imbalances helped foster the credit crisis by pushing down interest rates and driving investors to riskier assets, Hank Paulson, US Treasury secretary, has told the Financial Times.
In a valedictory interview, Mr Paulson cast the crisis as partly the result of a collective failure to come to terms with the way that the rise of emerging markets was reshaping the global financial system. These imbalances - arising from differences in the inclinations of different nations to save and invest - are reflected in large current account deficits and surpluses around the world.
