2008 Financial Crisis: A Comparative Analysis of Turkey and Brazil in Terms of Economic Policies

Abstract

The Financial Crisis, which broke out in the US due to the mortgage bubble, had spread through financial channels to core countries. The periphery countries that weren’t fully integrated into the financial markets had been influenced via economic ways, indirectly. However the crisis -spreading on a global scale- had had negative impacts on all countries and had led to changes in the economic policies of states. One of the possibilities of the crisis was for it to turn into a cyclical crisis because of its reach throughout the whole world and the failure of economic policies -applied to one after another- in the preventing of the spread and impact of the crisis in a short time, resulting in economic and neoliberal policies being questioned. The periphery economies, being economically affected by the crisis, had to assume many economic costs due to mortgage loans in the US, which had nothing to do with them. In the study, through the examples of Brazil and Turkey within the framework of these discussions, the implication of economic policy has been examined for periphery countries. In the study, the way in which both countries were affected by the crisis has been evaluated through net capital flows, foreign direct investments, foreign trade data, and main economic indicators. Although neoliberal policies, which pushed both countries towards this process, had added them to the global economic system, they had to apply Keynesian policies because neoliberalism had become inadequate in exiting the crisis. In the conclusion of the study, policy proposals have been made for getting out of the crisis by discussing the ineffectiveness of the economic policies that had been implemented.