Hurricane Lehman occasions bloodbath on Wall Street

Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the bunker following the CERN Laboratory experiment, along comes a financial storm so severe that you start thinking that it might have been better if those black holes had swallowed us up after all. I mean FFS what was the point in celebrating the Zimbabwean power-sharing deal and the lowering of tensions relating to the Zuma trial if Hurricane Lehman was about to hit us?

I don’t know how many of you watched Sky, CNN or one of the other overseas news channels but if you did you’d have seen the looks on the faces of those financial analysts and it was scary. When Alan Greenspan, former U.S chief of the Federal Reserve, says it’s the worst he’s ever experienced — and he’s experienced plenty — you know here comes big shit.

afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i6u55aefaUf_RXJC4-5kcva-gyWQ

In order to assist you lot I’ve looked around the web to try and find articles which explain the dilemma facing the major banks and investment houses, the governments and world markets. Give you some sort of feel for this as it is the biggest game on the planet right now. I did Economics 1 (very badly) at varsity and most of this stuff goes right over my head, so good luck.

A nice easy starter to try is this one from Paul Krugman of the New York Times who looks at the older systems of banking and the modern versions:

www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/opinion/15krugman.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

You might then want to take your Prozac and hide all sharp instruments before moving on to an article by Moneyweb’s Felicity Duncan entitled Murder on the trading floor.

www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page38?oid=225219&sn=Detail

By now you’ve digested it all and realised that maybe living with “kill for Zuma”, counter-revolutionary cartoons and Eskom power shedding isn’t that bad after all. (BTW if you watched Sky and saw Tsvangirai’s face after Mugabe launched into a tirade on the British, whom the new PM is hoping will support Zimbabwe financially, then you’ll be voting that as the priceless moment of 2008 — absolute classic.)

Right, if you’ve bandaged your wrists (don’t forget the tourniquet if you cut a major artery) then move swiftly along to this from the Mail & Guardian:

www.mg.co.za/article/2008-09-15-us-stocks-plummet-amid-credit-crisis

Barrack Obama blamed it on Republican policies that he says McCain supports:

www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9374EMO0&show_article=1

McCain says that stronger regulations are needed:

apnews.myway.com/article/20080915/D9375B500.html

Bear in mind that if the economy stays the focus then the Democrats will start strengthening at the polls while a major security disaster helps the Republicans. If this keeps up expect a substantial Obama bounce because even the GOPs won’t care about a terrorist invasion if there’s much more of the same.

Finally, this one from Reuters setting out the market turmoil pursuant to Lehman Brothers and the Merrill Lynch take-over:

www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0927996520080915

As I drew up the majority of this post at 21h00 last night, expect all of this to have been swallowed up by developments overnight. This for example from the Times of London confirming fears of a global financial meltdown:

business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article4761892.ece

And this from Business Day’s Mariam Isa on how this may impact on South Africa:

www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A844358

As this will affect all of us I thought that the exercise was well worth the effort and hopefully that we will all learn something from it.

Or at least those that got the wrist bandages and tourniquets right.