ScreamingEagle
Gold Member
- Jul 5, 2004
- 13,399
- 1,707
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Batten down the hatches: this is the big one
"Whole cities of pain. A continent of pain," said the great, if eccentric, Wall Street money dealer Jim Cramer recently. He was talking about the economic pain spreading across the United States, of course.
Until recently, the pain of the US housing market had not spread to our own fair land. Much of the economic data here has been, if anything, surprisingly healthy. But such figures are generally backward-looking and often look fine until suddenly they don't.
Last week we saw a dramatic escalation in pain levels as one mortgage lender after another either withdrew home loans or raised the interest rates. The chart shows the growing divergence between the Bank of England's official rate and interbank Libor rates that explains this.
This is the most concrete evidence to date that the esoteric "credit crunch" has moved out of the so-called "interbank money markets" and into the consciousness and pockets of the British people.
cont.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/07/economics.banking
"Whole cities of pain. A continent of pain," said the great, if eccentric, Wall Street money dealer Jim Cramer recently. He was talking about the economic pain spreading across the United States, of course.
Until recently, the pain of the US housing market had not spread to our own fair land. Much of the economic data here has been, if anything, surprisingly healthy. But such figures are generally backward-looking and often look fine until suddenly they don't.
Last week we saw a dramatic escalation in pain levels as one mortgage lender after another either withdrew home loans or raised the interest rates. The chart shows the growing divergence between the Bank of England's official rate and interbank Libor rates that explains this.
This is the most concrete evidence to date that the esoteric "credit crunch" has moved out of the so-called "interbank money markets" and into the consciousness and pockets of the British people.
cont.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/07/economics.banking
