Panic on the Streets: Banking system under stress
Saturday, September 15th, 2007I’m in Europe for a month, making my first trip back since heading to live in NZ nearly 6 years ago. Currently i’m having a lovely time in Southern Spain in a pretty little village called Benahavis.
Watching the UK news is so different: small soundbites, nothing too deep and its making me dizzy. But not as dizzy as those pictures of people queuing up at their local Northern Rock to get all their money out.
They seem so calm about it without quite realising the ramifications of their actions. A run on a major bank in the UK? Who would have thought it could happen in the modern well regulated era.
We have seen finance companies in NZ topple over like dominoes but the general public has taken the view that they were accidents waiting to happen and that people should have taken more care in what they were investing in. But a major financial institution would be a different story.
For money reformers the recent credit crisis was inevitable, a product of the incessant growth in the global money supply. How it will play out is anyone’s guess but there has never been a better time to expose the weakness and corruption at the heart of our money systems.
In the meantime people should check to make sure they do not have to much exposure to any single financial entity. What is amazing to me is how the stock markets have proved so resilient. There is lots of talk about the strength of the underlying economy but the effects of these recent months will take a long time to feed through.
I have a feeling this story has a long way to go.