PARIS, August 6, 2008 (AFP) - The following are comments made to AFP by economists on the origin and nature of global financial turmoil.

-- Elie Cohen, research director at France's CNRS

It's an American crisis and a European crisis. But I am sure it will soon be an Asian crisis in the sense that there will also be an economic slowdown in Asia.

-- Holger Schmieding, Bank of America

Too many people had taken mortgages at low interest rates and very easy conditions, which they could no longer afford at higher interest rates.

The real cheap money period was from from 2003 onwards. It was there because inflation was very low and the central banks were afraid of deflation and in the aftermath of the September 11 in the United States and the stock market problems worldwide, central banks were inclined to be very accommodative.

-- Veronique Riches-Flores, Chief European Economists, Societe Generale

There was a credit bubble, an excess of liquidity that carried over into asset prices -- real estate, shares, bonds ...

-- Kenneth Rogoff, professor, Harvard University, former IMF chief economist

The subprime crisis was the canary in the coal mine. If it hadn't been the subprime crisis, it would have been something else. The global economy and the financial system were headed for a fall.

The subprime crisis is a result of the massive US borrowing that kept interest rates artificially low in the United States ... and that lulled people into thinking there was no risk because credit was so freely available ...

When one big bank has a problem it's trying to convince us that it's a world problem, so that the government bails it out.

They want to get low interest rates loans from taxpayers, they want direct access to the Fed's discount window without any quid pro quo, any real regulation ...

The Fed and the US Treasury by standing behind the big investment banks is allowing them their highly risky activities at unrealistic interest rates.

-- Claudio Borio, head of research and policy analysis, Bank for International Settlements, in a personal study released in May

It already threatens to become one of the defining economic moments of the 21st century ...

The unfolding market turmoil is best seen as a natural result of a prolonged period of generalised and aggressive risk-taking, which happened to have the subprime market at its epicentre.