ARE WE DONE YET, OR JUST GETTING STARTED??

Since my last post over a week ago, the bad news from the US Markets, has continued t o trouble world stock markets.

The US economy grew at a SURPRISING 3.9% in the last quarter, DESPITE a weakening housing market, auto sector, and severe writedowns in the US financial sector.
The US Dollar continued its slide, as gold and oil have rallied to new highs.

So is there more bad news to come?

Well, Stanley O'Neal ex CEO of Merrill Lynch , is to receive a severance package of $160 million after the bank was hit with writeoffs of about $8.4 billion last quarter.Merrill's stock is down another 10% today!!!

Citigroup and their CDO mess isnt doing much better either.
Look for possible downgrades, not from other investment banks, but credit rating agencies next week.

Th e past week can be best summarised in the last two paragraphs of a book i read a few months ago, ' The Great Crash 1929 ' by the late John Kenneth Galbraith.

" Wall Street, in recent times, has become, as a learned phrase has it, very 'public relations conscious'. Since a speculative collapse can only follow a speculative boom, one might expect that Wall Street would lay a heavy hand on any resurgence of speculation. The Federal Reserve would be asked by bankers and brokers to lift margins to the limit; it would be warned to enforce the requirement sternly against those who might try try to borrow on their own stocks and bonds in order to buy more of them. The public would be warned sharply and often of the risks inherent in buying stocks for the rise. Those who persisted, nonetheless, would have no one to blame but themselves. The position of the Stock Exchange, its members, the banks, and the financial community in general would be perfectly clear and as well protected in the event of a further collapse as sound public relations allow,

As noted, all this might logically be expected. It will not come to pass. This is not because the instinct for self-preservation in Wall Street is poorly developed. On the contrary, it is probably normal and may be above. But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated. Long-run salvation by men of business has never been highly regarded if it means disturbance of orderly life and convenience in the present. So inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future. Here, at least equally with communism, lies the threat to capitalism. It is what causes men who know that things are going quite wrong to say that things are fundamentally sound."

The book was first published in 1954, and provides a detailed account of the events leading upto the 1929 crash and the consequences thereafter.
The last paragraph, sums up the situation in which we find world markets today.


(Over the weekend, i will put up some updates on gold investing and the indian markets.)