World Financial Armageddon

World Financial Armageddon. Part one [condensed for blog version]

In my original document I used a sub title "An Economic Force Majeure" as I felt the expression
credit crunch did not, in any way, reflect the devastating seriousness of the cataclysmic implosions/explosions in the world's financial systems/institutions. In its traditional usage contracts maybe rendered void by "Force Majeure", and I feel that an economic force majeure justifies actions that otherwise would not be legally acceptable, for example, recovering rewards such as fantastically high salaries, bonuses, company shares or what have you, given to executives who in any way were responsible for the World Financial Armageddon. Being responsible includes, for example, not acting on advance warnings of the consequences of their actions, not advising all and sundry of the impending problems and/or concealing vast amounts of toxic debt accrued by their companies.

How does an ordinary person , such as me, come to grips with the number of noughts involved in billions of this and several trillions of that. The front page of the Sunday Times Magazine dated 17/05/2009 has a headline "Anyone seen where our fifty trillion went?" Coincidently enough the magazine also featured a short story entitled "The Decline of the West". The author, Mr Hanif Kureishi, really hit a few contemporary nails hard on the head for, in several ways, his story embraced both the causes and effects of the World Financial Armageddon. Played for or not I feel he also partially illustrated what many people will recognise as a spend, spend, spend malaise that had the Western World very firmly in its grip. I only saw the magazine in July as it was passed on to me en route to the next family in the chain.

My worry is that very little priority will be given to ascertaining who was responsible, in any way, for the practically instantaneous implosion that brought some of the biggest financial institutions in the world crashing down under the weight of debt, billions of it "toxic debt".
Any dealing that is considered to be detrimental to any of the world's communities should be investigated with the backing of governments. Draconian power should be given to the people charged with finding out all of the facts in any way related to the Financial Armageddon.
Unless such a course is followed the whole matter may be swept under convenient carpets
all over the world and the game will re-open and vast sums of money will be released to hunt down ever larger amounts of money.

My mind boggles at the scope there has been for the outright theft of millions by clever personnel, with inside tracks, in practically any financial institution carrying huge amounts of toxic debt.

In part two of World Financial Armageddon I propose to give a few background points to justify my contention that many people, in key positions, must have known that financial disaster was impending.

Frederick W Gilling. 22/07/2009