Shares all over the world went down today further, with Dow Jones leading the pack below 10,000 points, cancelling four years of gains in several weeks. And of course, investors are really scared since they have drawn the US banks collapse lessons.
Which were namely three:
– government intervention can NOT save all the bad companies in the world, even if they would have all the necessary cash (see the AIG vs Lehman recent debates);
– saving a bank means that taxpayers will bear the cost, together with the remaining companies (which will havew to pay higher credit rates, higher taxes etc)
– and that when panic spreads out, it also goes in a globalised manner (something simillar to the dotcom euphoria).
Now of course not all shares are crap. But when investors liquidate also their European assets, things don’t look promissing. They look rather like the disease of the credit crunch and of the sophisticated mortgage derivatives was spread well in Europe, albeit not at the same dimensions / percentages of total assets.
Let’s hope this will not take too long, or we are heading for a global crash. And THIS is the bad news, unfortunately for the running share investors…