Hi Denial, Please excuse my reply but believe me it's in a...

Hi Denial,
Please excuse my reply but believe me it's in a general sense and not aimed at you and I am not trying to be arguementative but GBG aside for a sec, the current situation is far worse than any recent crashes and is now widely accepted as easily the worst since the great depression.

I can believe that.
When before have you ever seen the largest banks around the globe falling down like nine pins or unable to survive on their own legs and forced to merge at firesale prices?

When before have you ever seen or heard of Central banks around the world pumping in 100s of $billions of dollars to prop up the rapidly deteriorating credit markets?

When have you ever heard before of the head of the US Treasury getting down on his knee in front of congress to plead his case for the passage of a rescue package before his nation's economy collapses?

Have you ever heard of banks refusing to lend, or of numerous world leaders going to their public to reassure people of the strength of their banking systems?

Our own economy will be stuffed if the credit markets freeze up. For our Australian banks to operate, they borrow from overseas $2 for every $1 of deposits. What happens if they can't borrow overseas?

China and India's move up in the world came on the back of a number of years of global prosperity and easy credit in Western nations. Those two criteria appear to have had the brakes put on them severely. No more easy credit, and global prosperity will not be refueled for a number of years with many of the largest nations and economies already, or about to, go into recession.

Now even after Sept 11, President Bush looked nowhere near as worried as he is right now. Then his mind was on retaliation, now it's on avoiding dragging down the gurgler the rest of the worlds economies because of the US economic woes. He has no respect left and nor does Wall St nor the US Govt's ability to recover quickly from this.
Any recovery will be far from swift, nor in a straight line.

The desperately needed TARP will have to be funded by foreign debt or the printing of more US dollars- both have serious consequences that will only fester the current situation, but they have no other choice! It's that bad. The yanks have already pumped into the economy about a $trillion with another close to a $trillion about to get the nod. What are their campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan costing them, over the years- probably $trillions.

The world is seriously hurting and to downplay the seriousness of the situation is foolhardy.