Virgil
09-21-2008, 09:17 PM
They sure like those short paragraphs with a lot of "he."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4795052.ece
======================
September 21, 2008
Kaboom!...and bust. The crash of 2008
Banks collapse, stock markets tumble then bounce back, and experienced investors run scared. What’s really going on?
As the maelstrom raged through financial markets last week, Jim Mills was waist-deep in a tranquil Scottish river wondering what to do. News was coming through on his BlackBerry of the latest crisis.
That Thursday morning HBOS, one of Britain’s biggest banks, was being rescued by Lloyds TSB. Other banks were under pressure. Mills, a private-equity millionaire, was reeling, mainly from the shock.
Should he carry on fishing, or attend to business? Mills waded out, called his broker and decided it was time to head for the hills.
“I’m trying to get my cash into gilts,” he said. “RBS [Royal Bank of Scotland] could be next. At the moment you just don’t know.”
These were uncharted waters. “No fish either,” he muttered with gallows humour.
Mills knowsthe City,has made millions in recent years and saw trouble coming long ago. But he didn’t expect it to be this bad.
In the space of a few days the financial world was being upended and torn apart. Lehman Brothers, one of the four remaining investment-bank titans of Wall Street, had gone bust. Merrill Lynch, another giant, had sought rescue. The world’s biggest insurance company, AIG, was having to be salvaged by the US government. It was, said the budget director of the White House, “an economic 9/11”.
<snipped>
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4795052.ece
======================
September 21, 2008
Kaboom!...and bust. The crash of 2008
Banks collapse, stock markets tumble then bounce back, and experienced investors run scared. What’s really going on?
As the maelstrom raged through financial markets last week, Jim Mills was waist-deep in a tranquil Scottish river wondering what to do. News was coming through on his BlackBerry of the latest crisis.
That Thursday morning HBOS, one of Britain’s biggest banks, was being rescued by Lloyds TSB. Other banks were under pressure. Mills, a private-equity millionaire, was reeling, mainly from the shock.
Should he carry on fishing, or attend to business? Mills waded out, called his broker and decided it was time to head for the hills.
“I’m trying to get my cash into gilts,” he said. “RBS [Royal Bank of Scotland] could be next. At the moment you just don’t know.”
These were uncharted waters. “No fish either,” he muttered with gallows humour.
Mills knowsthe City,has made millions in recent years and saw trouble coming long ago. But he didn’t expect it to be this bad.
In the space of a few days the financial world was being upended and torn apart. Lehman Brothers, one of the four remaining investment-bank titans of Wall Street, had gone bust. Merrill Lynch, another giant, had sought rescue. The world’s biggest insurance company, AIG, was having to be salvaged by the US government. It was, said the budget director of the White House, “an economic 9/11”.
<snipped>