Is this, in the immortal words of REM, "The end of the world as we know it?" As I was heading to bed last night news was trickling through of the U.S. House of Representatives rejection of the US Treasury inspired White House plan for the bail-out of the US banking sector. It was rejected by 228 to 205 votes, despite supposed bi-partisan support for it, and in the aftermath of the vote there seems to have been a "what have we done?" moment . The rest of the world quickly worked out what they had done... and rapidly began dumping banking stocks all across global markets. This meant that banks already under threat because of the sub-prime crisis, the overall credit crunch and the recent spate of opportunistic short selling came under even greater pressure. yesterday probably saw the single greatest reorganisation of the banking system in history with many banks being nationalised or taken over. Wachovia, the fourth-largest US bank, was bought by larger rival Citigroup
Dialogues, monologues, sketches, poems, rants, theological and liturgical bits and bobs and miscellaneous other verbal doodles...