$50 Trillion of Global Financial Assets Lost in 2008

(Bloomberg): "The value of global financial assets including stocks, bonds and currencies probably fell by more than $50 trillion in 2008...Global stock markets lost about $28.7 trillion in 2008, and another $6.6 trillion has been wiped from the value of world equities in 2009"
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"The loss of financial wealth is enormous, and the consequences for the economies of the world will be unfortunately commensurate," said a former IMF Director. "There are serious economic and political stumbling blocks that may well cause the recovery to be costly and slow to consolidate...Poor macroeconomic and regulatory policies allowed the global economy to exceed its capacity to grow and contributed to a buildup in imbalances across asset and commodity markets. The previous sense of strength and invulnerability is now gone."
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The global economy is likely to shrink for the first time since World War II, and trade will decline by the most in 80 years. "This crisis is the first truly universal one in the history of humanity," said a former IMF Managing Director. “No country escapes from it. It has not yet bottomed out."