Re: [OPE-L] Financial stocks sink across Europe

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


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jan 31 2008 - 00:00:06 EST