Serious enough
Tengku Razaligh Hamzah
Although its size remains a mystery, we are glad to be told that the mini-budget will now be bigger and more comprehensive. This is because we have now discovered that the crisis is “more serious than anybody anticipated,”
I wonder who this ‘anybody’ is, and what remote mountaintop he has been living on.
Let’s see if what happened within the month of September 2008 alone in the US was serious enough to wake anybody up:
- The US Government had to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
- Merrill Lynch, AIG and Wachovia had to be rescued
- Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were turned into bank holding companies.
- Lehman Brothers submitted the largest bankruptcy filing in US history at USD639 Billion.
- The Dow fell 777.68 points in a day.
- There was a massive electronic run on the money markets, with 550Bn reportedly being withdrawn within one two-hour period.
- The financial crisis became the dominant issue of the US Presidential campaign
- Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, had announced a proposal for a USD700 Billion bailout.
