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Blood markets.

Article Excerpt
The wild gyrations on global stock markets; the announcements of massive losses by the largest US banks; the significant decline in property values now taking hold in the United States and United Kingdom; the announcement of $8 billion losses in rogue derivatives trading in Europe accompanied by a shock three-quarters of one per cent reduction in the interest rate charged by the US Central Reserve with the promise of more to come; the avoidance of risk that is now the dominant behaviour in credit markets, thereby constraining the availability of credit; the significant rise in property foreclosures in the United States; the personal trauma of not only those who are losing their homes but of others who cannot escape the effects of these events, whether it be the reversal of property valuations that in the last ten years have come to support indebtedness and consumption patterns, or merely the decline in the value of superannuation funds: are these signs of a temporary crisis or of one more profound and far-reaching in its effects? This is the question everyone wants answered.

Partial answers can be found in an account of the unique qualities and precariousness of contemporary financial structures, but just these features ensure a singularity that makes comparison with the past unreliable, except in highly generalised terms. It is not too hard, for example, to generalise about gross excess. It has its...

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