Friday, September 05, 2008

Global Financial System 'at the Brink'

The worldwide financial system has been "pushed to the brink" in its most severe downturn since the Great Depression, although the actions of American policy-makers have averted disaster, the head of Canada's largest bank said Friday. "Not since the [Second World War] has the financial system itself been in such a state of dysfunction," Royal Bank chief executive Gordon Nixon told a roundtable of prominent business leaders in Calgary.