World Stock Markets - No End Yet in Sight to Worst Crisis since 30's

The financial crisis that began 13 months ago has entered a new, far more serious phase.

The U.S. financial system resembles a patient in intensive care. The body is trying to fight off a disease that is spreading, and as it does so, the body convulses, settles for a time and then convulses again. The illness seems to be overwhelming the self-healing tendencies of markets. The doctors in charge are resorting to ever-more invasive treatment, and are now experimenting with remedies that have never before been applied.

NVDL: Interesting to see the Wall Street Journal echoing the comments I made yesterday evening here - saying that markets were suffering 'convulsions' and comparing it to the deprivations affecting a living organism.

clipped from finance.yahoo.com Expectations for a quick end to the crisis are fading fast. "I think it's going to last a lot longer than perhaps we would have anticipated," Anne Mulcahy, chief executive of Xerox Corp., said Wednesday. "This has been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. There is no question about it," said Mark Gertler, a New York University economist who worked with fellow academic Ben Bernanke, now the Federal Reserve chairman, to explain how financial turmoil can infect the overall economy. "But at the same time we have the policy mechanisms in place fighting it, which is something we didn't have during the Great Depression."