ooooooooooooooooooopsssssssssssss

buncha bankers saying 'mm,should have checked out these folk who asked to borrow money'

We confess it was the prospect or principle of an absence of monetary transaction that excited us, Madam. But upon inspection of the manifesto here:

http://freeculture.org/manifesto/

it seems that that is not exactly what the originators of the expression had in mind. It is the "bottom up" attitude that they want to promote around the world. That does a little worry us as an universal principle. There are people in our circle who might judge it rather too forward.

TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
(Robert A.Heinlein, The Cat Who Could Walk Through Walls)

In some respects, the resemblance between what is happening now and the Wall Street Crash is striking:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash

In particular, the crash itself was preceded by a period of market volatility, with substantial falls in the month before Black Thursday, following a long boom based on unsustainable lending (then, to buy stocks and shares; now, perhaps, to buy over-valued houses).

If these events can be contained within the areas specifically affected by what might be regarded as dodgy mortgage lending and unwise and unscrupulous buying and selling of mortgage loans, then the international stock and money markets might indeed be able to withstand the effects, albeit not without the immense cost of vast cash injections from international banks in a desperate effort to contain it. The problem seems, however, to be twofold. Firstly, if too many of these banks try too hard for too long to prop matters up by means of such cash injections, they may risk weakening themselves to the point of possible collapse (and, of course, some of these banks have themsleves been implicated directly as well as indirectly in the dodgy mortgage market). Secondly - and potentially far more seriously - if this eventually spirals to accommodate similar problems associated with other personal debt, then corporate debt and finally national and international government debt, there is a very real risk that there may be no likelihood of recovery or escape from it at all, for few if any nations today are other than gravely indebted to one another. If this second scenario arises, the differences between the present woes and those of 1929 will soon become far more uncomfortably apparent than the similarities; at the same time, there will almost certainly be currency and equity speculators at the ready to make a killing out of it all when it finally hits rock bottom, just as has always been and no doubt always will be the case. The old chestnut "as safe as the Bank of England" - never one realistically to encompass watertight and unassailable credibility at any time - is now looking ever-increasingly as dodgy as the international sub-prime mortgage market itself.

Best,

Alistair

fear has overtaken greed

spend it all on fun and tell Caesar yer skint