<p>The late 20^<th> century saw the frequent oc136 currence of financial bubbles in Asia, Europe, U. S. and emerging countries. What helped promote the series of bubbles institutionally was the globalization movement that enforced neo-liberalism around the globe. Speculative funds and financial capital ran around the globe, creating financial bubbles in various parts of the world. What made that possible technically was the explosive growth of the Internet. The main reason why the U. S. experienced an equities market bubble in the late 1990s and the U. S. and Europe had their housing bubbles in the early 2000s was that a massive amount of speculative money flew in from Japan and emerging countries. Once the housing bubbles collapsed in the U. S. and Europe, speculative money then flew into emerging countries, creating emerging market bubbles and causing energy and food prices to soar. The U. S. bubbles in the early 2000s weren't confined in the housing sector, but they emerged as financial bubbles as well, with new financial products such as CDS and CDO started exchanging hands in a large scale. This can be defined as a 21^<st>-century-type financial bubble. The Lehman Shock in September 2008 led to the global economic and financial crises, but panicky situations ended as governments and central banks in Europe and the U. S. took massive fiscal spending and provided ample liquidity. The U. S. Federal Reserve introduced quantitative easing, purchasing $600 billion of government bonds and injected a massive amount of money into financial markets. The Fed even took unconventional monetary steps of purchasing risk assets to cope with the crisis. The U. S. central bank clearly wanted to avoid another global depression and deflation. Although the massive fiscal spending and easy monetary policy helped contain the global crisis, that resulted in the accumulation of fiscal deficits and caused sovereign debt crises and defaults around the globe. The financial and economic crises turned into fiscal debt crisis. This is the characteristics of the 21^<st>-century-type (modern) crisis that took place in Japan, the U. S. and Europe. Governments had to take a large-scale fiscal spending to combat financial crisis. Without such a massive fiscal spending to reignite demands, economic crises would only worsen. However, the U. S. can no longer take an aggressive fiscal spending to support the economy, as the rating of the U. S. Treasury bond was downgraded in August 2011 for the first time ever. It has also become difficult for the Federal Reserve to take ultra-easy monetary policy due to mounting criticism that it's propelling emerging country bubbles. In Europe, the Greek debt crises surfaced twice in 2010 and 2011, generating talks that the euro single-currency system might eventually fall apart. What is more serious is that even though the emerging market bubbles collapse, energy and food price inflation doesn't appear to be easing. That is because of the sudden population explosion in those emerging countries. Higher living standards in those emerging countries resulted in massive demand for food, and supply-demand balances can no longer be attained. Speculations have also made food prices soar. Economic growth in emerging countries also led to higher energy demand and again, speculations only caused resource prices to jump. Developed nations have grown by exploiting resources and foods at cheaper prices, but such a growth model can't continue as food and energy prices rose. Same thing can be said for the newly emerging countries. As a result, economic growth will cease not only in Japan, the U. S. and Europe, but in emerging countries as well. That would cause a global-scale fiscal debt crisis. Human beings are now facing the food and energy crises but environmental issues as well. Deterioration in ecological system appears to be causing serious</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>