Last week, we saw a panicky meltdown of global stock markets (with the exception of those in China) with the U.S. Federal Reserve, European and Japanese Central banks all scrambling to pour money into their respective financial systems in an attempt to avert potential credit crunches. What on earth is happening?

Philip Bowring in his Asia Sentinel article tries to identify the proximate causes, which lie with the structuring and shady operation of the global financial markets, while Max Wolff at The Huffington Post helps us understand in his blogpost the ultimate causes, which emanated from the United States’ build-up of the housing bubble along with unmanageable sub-prime debt.