Tuesday 3 March 2009

Death Spiral, the sequel

Back in September and October last year, the markets crashed on the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Th governments of the world decided that it would not let that happen again, so now we have round after round of bailouts to keep zombie companies like AIG and Northern Wreck going.

But this week is a new turn for the worse, markets are falling precipitously since last Friday, the FTSE is down over 10% in 3 days; many are saying they see little support for prices until they hit 3000 or less. Even gold is falling again as deleveraging kicks-off with renewed vigour.

In the midst of this, Ben Bernanke is sounding off about US Fed policy, Brown is being snubbed by Obama and throwing his phones at the wall in the Whitehouse ante room.

Meanwhile, the markets fall and fall. The Government intervention is cack-handed and ill-though out. Look at the current Lloyd's debacle, the company was set to announce the Government asset insurance terms on Friday, here we are 3 trading days later and the share price is down nearly 50% on no news. Terrible PR handling, terrible Government.

The markets are the telling the UK Government what it thinks of its plans, just wait until the bond markets catch-up. We need a concerted plan, waiting for the G20 in April is a bad option.

5 comments:

Old BE said...

BOM's article is very sobering. It seems the US in particular is making similar mistakes to the last time and might well plunge itself in to a huger recession or worse. Is there something Britain can do to insulate?

CityUnslicker said...

BE - We will be better off thanks to our currency than the euro, but the US get the benefit of their reserve status.

For us we need to cut spending on on-productive public sector, raise taxes and stop bailing out the wrong firms...no chance of that happening.

Loks like the market make get things over soonish though...

Mark Wadsworth said...

Does this surprise anyone? Flags and pennants and all that.

Anonymous said...

And the EU is looking for
a bit of back-pocket money too.

Oh, around £16.3 trillion to cover toxic waste.
The Death Spiral Sequel:-
We are circling the hole in the middle.
YEEEE HAAAWWW!

Anonymous said...

There is no get out strategy. This has been going on for many, many generations.
The whole of the world is hypnotised and can not see what is wrong. Those running the banks and governments are hypnotised. They are out of touch with reality.
The only real solution is a totally different form of government, where the people who pay the piper actually do call the tune.
http://www.angelfire.com/realm3/accord/montrick.htm