Anniversary of credit crisis 信用危机

One year after the onset of a global credit crunch, has anything fundamentally changed?

A year into the global credit crunch, \ Wall Street is still nursing its wounds. Investment banks are racking up billions of dollars in losses related to mortgages. Nine regional banks have been forced out of business. Stocks have dipped into bear market territory. Analysts say fear is still the prevailing emotion.

I think it's going to be a very difficult path ahead. I don't think that you can visualize a recovery coming from Wall Street, because Wall Street has been based on innovation in the past years and I think that there is fear out there guiding any future innovation at least at this point in time.

In Wall Street's absence, the US government has been trying to take the lead. The Bush administration's stimulus package passed in February put a little cash back in homeowners' pockets. The Federal Reserve also came to the aid of struggling mortgage finance giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Administration officials claim we are on the road to recovery.

While home price adjustments will continue for some time, and certainly well beyond the end of this year, I believe we can move through the bulk of the correction in months rather than years.

People we talked to on the streets of New York, however, did not share Paulson's optimism.

I think we're in for a tough run, probably for the next 5 to 10 years.

I have a friend that works in real estate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and she's lost her job. And she's had, she's had her job for a long time. And she said it got so bad that in her office they couldn't even afford to buy toilet paper.

So when can we expect these tough times to turn a little brighter? Analysts say, don't hold your breath.

I think this is more a long term, a long term scenario where you would see recovery, that doesn't necessarily mean 2009. It will depend on a great deal \ what the mortgage market does at the homeowner level, at the pricing level. Unfortunately these links there are still very very, very heavy.

Government assistance and renewed confidence on Wall Street may help. But many market watchers, including former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, believe the global credit crisis won't end until the US housing market recovers. Maggie Lake, CNN, New York.