Kondratieff's Pessimism

Long article here, but worth the read, if only because it reviews the history of Sep/Oct '08--and asks a few questions about those days.

To get you started:

The second fateful date to remember was October 7, 2008, when the UK almost collapsed. Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, describes the situation: "Two of our major banks which had had difficulty in obtaining funding could raise money only for one week then only for one day, and then on that Monday and Tuesday it was not possible even for those two banks really to be confident they could get to the end of the day."¹⁰ This was the justification given for the Bank of England to provide secret loans of £61.6 billion to The Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS to maintain solvency.¹¹ Amazingly, news of these loans was never revealed until November 24, 2009, more than one year later.

Recalling that fateful day, David Soanes, Managing Director of UBS Bank, and part of the group assembled to assist with the UK government’s crisis response, stated, "We only really knew by probably about seven o’clock at night (October 7, 2008), that we, that everyone was going to get through to the next day."¹² These revelations raise new questions about the true scope of bailouts undertaken by the major governments at the time. Lord Myners, the UK Financial Services Secretary, alluded to similar covert banking operations conducted by the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve.13 We have no idea what he is referring to, but we would certainly be interested to learn more.

So would we all!