From: Jerry Levy (jerry_levy@VERIZON.NET)
Date: Mon Jan 21 2008 - 11:49:48 EST
Not just in Europe, Alejandro. See following story. [Today is a holiday in the US - Martin Luther King Jr. Day - so the stock markets are closed here.] "We are all bears now" seems to be the motto de jour in the financial markets. But, there seems to me to be a lot of hyperbole by Marxians about this: terms like "meltdown" and "crash" are being used too loosely. Isn't a recession, with perhaps stagflation, more likely than a "meltdown", "collapse", or "crash"? Even "crisis" may be an exaggeration for a periodic downturn in a capitalist economy. In solidarity, Jerry Asian, European Markets In Massive Declines NEW DELHI - Asian and European markets nose-dived on Monday as hope that healthy local economies might escape the force of a United States recession evaporated and fear gripped investors instead. Blue chip stocks lead the declines in most markets, dragging major indexes in Hong Kong, Shanghai and India down by more than 5 percent during the day, while those in South Korea and Australia fell by nearly 3 percent. In Japan, which may be facing a new recession of its own, most indexes were off by more than 3 percent. European shares sank 4 percent by late morning on Monday, putting them on track for their biggest one-day fall in more than four and a half years as fears of a recession in the United States rattled investors. Shares in oil and financial companies took a hammering, Reuters reported. By midday, the FTSEurofirst index of top European shares was down 3.9 percent at 1,304.98 points, a level not seen in eighteen months. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/index.html? adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1200927837-PvLbAt8uX6vnlGwFwOFwww
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