European Stocks Hit Five Year Low
European stock markets continued to fall on Friday, causing it to hit rock bottom: they ‘tumbled to their lowest close in more than five years amid fears that frozen credit markets are ushering in a global recession,’ as Al Jazeera reported on Saturday.
One of the reasons European stock markets continued to fall is that investors fear that European governments are not doing enough to stop the crisis. Many analysts and other experts have called on European leaders to coordinate their efforts. Thus far, however, they have refused to do so. Instead, they are trying to deal with the crisis individually.
At the same time, far-left protestors in Britain expressed anger at the nationalization of banks in trouble. They protested in front of the Bank of Britain carrying signs that read “Why should we pay for their crisis?”
The response of the protesters is yet more proof that ‘normal citizens,’ and especially highly ideological ones, should be ignored completely during times of crisis. Facts be damned, their ideology comes first and foremost. They seem incapable of realizing that when big banks go down, they will too. Especially those of them who live on government welfare.
They remind me an awful lot of the looters in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. They seem to believe that big corporations are per definition evil, and a drain on mankind. Incapable they are of understanding that this big companies are the backbone of the economy. If they fall, others will follow.
No, they aren’t like the looters in Atlas Shrugged. The looters and moochers in Atlas Shrugged were the businesses looking for government handouts.
Government intervention may well prolong the crisis. What’s needed is for the economy to bottom out and then be rebuilt upon a rational basis. That’s the only way our children can be ensured of a truly sensible productive economy in the future.
The U.S Government created this mess by making it all but impossible for banks not to lend to unqualified borrowers.
What the government needs to do is get out of the way now and let rational Capitalists make their own decisions.