Crisis waves could drown world economy

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- Say hello to the world's new financial Global Repositioning System. Say goodbye to $2.5 trillion.

The great Wall Street meltdown has now gone worldwide. It took less than a month for that to happen. By contrast, it took nearly two years from the initial Wall Street Crash of Black Tuesday in October 1929 for the crisis to cross the Atlantic and bring down the Creditanstalt banking house in Vienna, setting off the European side of the Great Depression that led to the rise of Adolf Hitler.

The major nations of the European Union are now moving -- ponderously and so far ineffectually -- to try to protect themselves from the global financial tsunami as its credit crunch ripples across the world.

Moves by Ireland and Germany to guarantee money in the banks were not met joyously by other countries in Europe. Germany apparently is looking at a bigger program that would replace its case-by-case dealing with troubled banks. The Australian central bank gave Asian banks something to uptick about with a 1-point drop in interest rates to 6 percent.

At close of trading Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was under 10,000 for the first time since right after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. However, it did rather better than Asian and especially European stock markets.

Gold and government bonds are the hot buys at the moment -- though we have yet to see how long trust holds up in the bonds market.

The European Union is also reeling: It is threatened by national-level responses to the crisis that are likely to make it worse. EU finance ministers gathered Tuesday to try to craft a common response. Much hangs on this, but even if they succeed, will it be quick enough to calm markets? The EU is less nimble institutionally than the United States. So far the response of neither Washington nor Brussels has been impressive -- to put it mildly.

Indeed, it is very likely that the drop in investor confidence in the United States may be in large part because the U.S. government buyout of toxic mortgage securities is going to take weeks to get under way, and because $700 billion may be only "a drop in the bucket" against the actual liquidity needs. Meanwhile Pope Benedict XVI has warned that the global financial system is "built on sand." At least he wasn't speaking ex cathedra.

But the pope knew what he was talking about: Since Oct. 9, 2007, the Dow has lost nearly 30 percent of its value. If that's not a depression, what is?

The U.S. Federal Reserve is expanding the scope of its actions into the commercial paper market to shore up the ability of businesses to get the short-term credit they need for day-to-day operations. This potentially commits a few hundred billion more of taxpayer dollars and is "rewriting textbooks on central banking," as The Wall Street Journal put it.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said in his first inaugural address, during the banking crisis he defused at the very beginning of his 12-year presidency in April 1933, "This nation asks for action, and action now." But the U.S. Congress continues to act with all the deliberation and speed of a bad-tempered, senile old cross-eyed crab.

For all the demands for quick action -- right now and real big -- the morphing of a three-page outline into a 400-page piece of legislation in a week is not being followed by rapid implementation. Some aspects of the plan won't be in effect for about a month, which would give the Bush administration only about 10 weeks to deal with it before handing off to POTUS44, whether that be Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., or Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

If the bailout plan was supposed to settle the markets, well, put your money in Pepto-Bismol and rollercoaster metaphor futures. The DJIA, at one time more than 800 points off on the day, ended Monday down 370, or 3.6 percent. And that was the best showing for major markets. Russia continues in freefall, and the Moscow market was down 19 percent Monday. In all, markets dropped about $2.5 trillion in paper worth.

Even black gold has lost much of its glitter. Oil has dropped to less than $90 a barrel, about 40 percent less than the record $147 a barrel in July. This, of course, is much of Russia's problem. In the short term, that is good news for the beleaguered U.S. economy. Gas prices, far from soaring above $5 a gallon, are now down around and below $3.50.

The most alarming trend of all remains the apparent helplessness, indecision and fractious, shortsighted selfishness of the world's major governments. Far from being an exception to the rule, U.S. President George W. Bush's pallid, always-behind-the-curve passive response to events and initiatives crafted by others now appears the norm among Group of Eight leaders. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry "Hank" Paulson, in fact, has stood out from national leaders and international financiers and bankers for his willingness to, as FDR put it, "act, and act now."

The governments of the world now appear basically helpless in trying to steer the world economy in a way that has not been seen in nearly 80 years. If there is one perception that could topple the human race into the chasm of a second Great Depression, that is it.

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(UPI Commentary by Martin Sieff)