Larry Elliott
The Guardian
August 5, 2011
The world’s financial markets closed for business nursing losses of more than $2.5 tn (£1.53tn) after a week of turbulent selling not seen since the dark days of late 2008, when the big beasts of banking were forced to beg for government help and the global economy was gripped by its worst recession since the 1930s.
Hundreds of billions of pounds have been wiped off share prices in London. Across the Atlantic, Wall Street alone was staring at losses of $2tn or more after a fortnight of almost incessant selling. Front pages again carried pictures of traders with their heads in their hands looking at a sea of red on their computer screens.
The jagged downward lines of share price indices pointed the way in which the world economy seems to have turned after a week that has left the financial system on the brink of another global crisis. It seems that the problems that first emerged at the outset of the credit crunch four years ago almost to this very day – the unofficial anniversary is this coming Tuesday, 9 August – never went away despite billions of taxpayer support for the system.
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