Sunday, October 12, 2008

Without real leadership, we face disaster


A lethal new threat is emerging at the dark heart of the financial system. We must have a unified global response or an already perilous position will become a calamity

Will Hutton
The Observer, Sunday October 12 2008

"In the week of the crash in 1929, Wall Street fell by 23 per cent. Last week, it fell by 18 per cent, London and Frankfurt by 21 per cent and Japan's Nikkei by 24 per cent. Every major financial centre's interbank market is frozen. Trust and confidence have collapsed; the global system is paralysed on a scale that now surpasses 1929. There is a combination of a worldwide bank run, seizure of credit markets and collapse of asset values that could plunge the globe into a depression. This is history's joke: the crisis of capitalism long predicted by communists and socialists who are no longer able to take advantage of it........

For 30 years, greedy, callow, ignorant financiers, supported by no less callow politicians from all the political parties, have proclaimed the wonders of financial innovation and how proud we all should be of the City of London. The price tag for their behaviour is an economic calamity. We should never have bought such snake oil. The consolation in these dark times is that we never will again."

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