DAILY MAIL: Almost exactly seven years ago Al Qaeda terrorists targeted their hijacked planes into the Twin Towers at the heart of New York’s financial centre — and the world was transformed.
There were no deaths this week, but the effects of the carnage on the financial markets will be far more profound and destabilising than the 9/11 atrocity.
For almost all of us, it will, I predict, be a change for the worse, and for a large minority the consequences will be extremely distressing.
The Western world — Britain, Europe and the U.S. — has moved from excess to austerity overnight. This week’s financial typhoon will savagely impact living standards.
In due course, it will topple governments and lead to a permanent transfer of economic and political power from Europe and America to the emergent and, in some cases, such as China, semi-barbarous economies in the East.
I know I will be accused of being unnecessarily apocalyptic and irresponsibly negative, but I believe that the greatest mistake we can now make is to downplay the seriousness of the situation and bury our heads in the sand.
The seismic events which have seen the near-destruction of the investment banking sector and the collapse of insurance giant AIG are on the scale of the Great Crash of 1929.
That was such a disaster because it created conditions for the emergence of fascism in continental Europe and then World War II.
Although it is hard to predict the consequences, we should expect ramifications of equal significance — including the re-emergence of violent Far Right parties across the globe.
Some experts were talking this week as if the financial crisis was nearly over. They could not be more wrong. The downturn has only just begun — and for most citizens uninvolved with finance the consequences have not been felt at all.
But they will be felt very soon and very brutally. The British economy is in the same position as the Texan coast earlier this month as Hurricane Ike approached — apparently calm, with life going on as normal, but an almighty storm is raging just over the horizon and heading our way with terrifying speed. Peter Oborne: Apocalypse Now? New World Order Could Have Devastating Implications for Western Nations >>> | September 20, 2008
Cross-posted at The Shrewd Economist >>>
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