I LISTENED with interest one morning recently to hear an ‘expert’ describe the markets – in other words, world stock markets – as ‘probably 25-year-old egotists who wouldn’t even know how to find Ireland or Portugal on the map’.
But while this may have brought a smile to my face, the work of those egotists has cost this country – and the markets in general – another fortune in recent days.
I don’t know about you but, surely to God, the time has come for countries to put these traders in their place.
Last week, rating agencies threatened to downgrade the US because of political posturing between the Democrats and Republicans.
The dogs in the streets knew a deal would be struck before the deadline for a default, so why didn’t they just keep their mouths shut and prevent further nervousness to enter the market.
Remember, these are the same rating agencies which caused a run on the Euro in the past year, and the same rating agencies which said everything was OK when, in fact, the world economy was overheating and ready to explode.
Their answer to the global crisis was to write down a country’s finances, reduce their rating and sit back and watch people lose a fortune: their jobs, homes, livelihoods and everything else you might care to mention – all with immunity.
Why we should take any notice of such rating agencies is beyond me. Why we should allow 25-year-old egotists rule the roost and control the fortunes of millions of people is beyond belief.
With all the top level meetings between governments, banks and other financial institutions, surely someone must have come up with a suggestion or two to put manners on these young whelps.
Instead, all that seems to be happening is governments and economies keep taking it on the chin – with the little people (you and I) having to constantly pick up the tab through extra taxation, cuts to social welfare or whatever, in order to continue to fund the very expensive game these individuals insist on playing.
A story outlining the freezing of the banking system following the demise of Lehman’s in the summer of 2008 is frightening to say the least.
The so-called experts didn’t believe that the whole system – which, by the way, relied on ‘paper’ transactions – could freeze up within three days, wreaking total havoc, which will take years to resolve.
The banks simply stopped lending to each other because they lost faith in the very system they were promoting.
A lot of money has been written off since then; banks have been bailed out to the tune of billions of euro or dollars, take your pick, but every day a new crisis of confidence seems to rear its ugly head.
If anything has been learned, it must surely be that the old system is flawed and needs to be drastically changed.
You’d think there would be agreement among our banking experts that this should be the case, but the events of last week show that 36 months into this crisis and nothing appears to have been learned and definitely no progress has been made.
Countless trillions were again lost on world markets last week.
No doubt, further meetings between our political leaders will take place, but nothing will change.
The latest targets for the markets, Spain and Italy, are deemed to be too big to bail out. Wouldn’t you think if that were the case that those causing the jitters in the markets for the sake of making profits by selling short or whatever else they do, might, for a change, try to act positively instead of promoting even more financial disaster?
At least both of these countries have something the rest of us do not have to look forward to – fine weather.
In our case it is the story of yet another summer that never was and more austerity measures to add to the misery of a damp, dark and dismal run in to Christmas.