Monday, January 21, 2008

Fears of a US recession spilled over into Asian markets

21/01/08 "ICH" --- - On Monday, fears of a US recession spilled over into Asian markets sending stocks tumbling. Indexes were hammered across the board in what turned out to be the worst day of trading since 2001. In India, the Bombay Sensitive Index plunged 1408 points, to 17,605. In China, the Shanghai Composite dropped 266 points (or 5.5%) to 23,818, while in Japan, the Nikkei fell 535 points, to 13,325 points. The bloodletting stretched across the continent and into Europe where shares nosedived by more than 4% by mid-morning “putting them on track for their biggest one-day fall in more than four and a half years.”

The huge sell-off is a sign that global investors do not believe that the Fed's rate cuts or President Bush's $150 billion “stimulus package” can revive the flagging economy or breathe new life into the over-extended US consumer. After Monday's sharp downturn, the prospects for averting a deep and protracted recession are slim to none.


The present crisis is not the result of normal market forces, but price fixing at the Federal Reserve and the financial engineering of the main investment banks. If there had been sufficient regulation of the activities of the Central Bank, so that interest rates had not been kept below the rate of inflation for over 31 months straight (under Greenspan) than the trillions of dollars in low-interest credit would not have flooded the real estate market, igniting a frenzy of speculative home-buying and creating the biggest housing bubble in US history. Despite his feeble excuses, Greenspan's role in destroying the US economy is no longer in doubt. Even the far-right Op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal conceded Greenspan's culpability in Saturday's edition.

Thank You Very Much, Capitalism. Perhaps now the blissfully ignorant majority poor and middle class will stand up and put you in your place - all of the gulags that you have been building to house all of us malcontents. Good riddance you fascist pig bastards.

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