World Opinion on the 'bailout': Very interesting read

[CrimsonWhite]

Interesting piece on world Opinion about the crisis and what it could do to the World economy.

Shades of Schadenfreude
As the United States wallows in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the world looks on with horror, fear and sometimes guilty pleasure.

Rarely does an event capture the world's attention as the American financial crisis has in the past few days. In Mexico, they're calling it the "American FOBAPROA," an echo of that country's infamous 1994 bailout fund. In Beijing, many are hoping it will chasten China's free-spending materialists. In France, President Sarkozy views it as a vindication of heavy-handed government policies. The crisis, which has caused the spectacular failure of storied banks like Lehman Bros. and Wachovia, and probably more to come, hasn't caused a global financial meltdown (yet). But its effects are being felt on minds and pocketbooks around the world. Here—from our correspondents in Britain, France, China, Germany, South Korea and Japan—are glimpses of the international reaction to the panic on Wall Street.
—Barrett Sheridan

Britain: Rooting for the rescue plan.
The British don't have time to gloat. They're too worried about their own pension funds and savings accounts. Last week, the historical Scottish bank HBOS failed and now another high-street stalwart, Bradford & Bingley, has gone under. While most people don't understand the first thing about the FTSE, let alone complex derivatives, there's a pervasive feeling of cold panic. "It's like bad weather," says Tom Norman, 41, "That's how I see it. We've got a hurricane coming towards us and there's nothing to be done but hunker in."

What the World Thinks of the U.S. Financial Crisis | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com

 

[Annie]

Suddenly we're not alone:

Europe's Panic - WSJ.com

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* REVIEW & OUTLOOK
* OCTOBER 6, 2008

Europe's Panic
The Schadenfreude about America didn't last long.


The only thing more predictable than European glee at American economic trouble is how quickly it fades amid Europe's own problems. So no sooner did Der Spiegel publish its latest eulogy for American power last week ("The Price of Hubris") than European banks had to be rescued one after another. The euro's recent fall of about 5% against the dollar is further proof that the credit mania was a global phenomenon and its aftermath requires global responses....

 

[editec]

America sneezes and the whole world gets pneumonia

 

[Toro]

Europe has serious problems too. Their banks generally have more debt than American banks.

 

[Zoomie1980]

America sneezes and the whole world gets pneumonia

Does that surprise anyone? We are the world's only Superpower and that does not just mean military. Our consuming binge fuels the entire planet. We ARE the crux of the "global market". The world sells us stuff, they don;t buy our stuff! When we stop buying they all go into the tank.

 

[dilloduck]

Does that surprise anyone? We are the world's only Superpower and that does not just mean military. Our consuming binge fuels the entire planet. We ARE the crux of the "global market". The world sells us stuff, they don;t buy our stuff! When we stop buying they all go into the tank.

You mean even if Obama gets elected they might not love us ?

 

[Epsilon Delta]

The whole world is going into the shitter:

Panic grips global financial markets

European bank stocks suffered massive losses. Britain’s HBOS dropped 19.8 percent, Lloyds lost 10.8 percent, the Royal Bank of Scotland plummeted by 20.5 percent, Switzerland’s UBS fell 12 percent, Belgium’s Dexia declined 20 percent, Germany’s Commerzbank lost 12.5 percent, Deutsche Bank was off 8.4 percent, France’s Societe Generale gave up 9.5 percent and Italy’s UniCredit shares plunged 9 percent before trading in its stock was suspended. [...]

Share prices also fell heavily across Asia. China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dropped 5.2 percent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 5 percent and Tokyo’s Nikkei Stock Average declined 4.3 percent to its lowest level since February 2004. Benchmark indexes in Singapore, Seoul and Mumbai fell, respectively, 5.6 percent, 4.3 percent and 5.8 percent. Shares in Indonesia plunged 10 percent.

In South America, exchanges were shut down in Brazil and Peru because of massive selling.

The Toronto Stock Exchange’s principal index fell more than 1,000 points, or 11 per cent, then recovered about half of its losses to close down by 573 points, or 5.3 percent.

In the US, panic selling at one point dropped the Dow by 800 points and brought the index below the 10,000 mark for the first time since 2004. [...] For all of last week, the Dow lost 7.4 percent, the Nasdaq fell 10.8 percent and the S&P 500 declined 9.4 percent.

The plunge on Wall Street came despite new steps by the Federal Reserve Board to unfreeze credit markets by flooding the banks with cheap loans. [...] The global market panic has already demonstrated that the bailout, while covering the losses of the most powerful sections of the financial elite, will do little, if anything, to stem the deepening financial crisis and recession. The scale of worthless paper assets within the global banking system is so immense that the banks themselves have no confidence in the credit-worthiness of their counterparts and are refusing to lend.

Monday’s sell-off was precipitated by a number of factors. The US jobless report issued Friday showed a large increase in the net job loss in September, increasing fears of a deep and protracted recession. A series of bank failures destabilized the entire banking system in Europe. And the European financial summit held Saturday produced no coordinated plan to head off more bank failures.

All of the financial indices on Monday pointed to a general collapse of confidence in the world credit system, which is increasingly undermining the broader economy. Oil prices continued to fall sharply, gold futures soared, yields on US government bonds fell to nearly zero and inter-bank lending rates rose even higher.

The Conference Board in the US reported that its employment trends index fell 0.8 percent in September, leaving it almost 10 percent below the level a year ago. Many economists are now predicting that unemployment in the US will rise sharply, exceeding 7 percent in early 2009.

 

[editec]

Banking is an INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITY.

National banks are ALL playing the same game, folks.

Notice that England and OZ are ALSO starting to have falling real estate prices?

tick tock.