The Crash
The casualties will not just be the highly paid bankers, for whom there will be little sympathy, but also the car dealers, the shop assistants, the restaurant staff, the cleaners and all the other people whose employment has relied on the wealth generated in the markets, writes Larry Elliott. Sure, Britain is good at pharmaceuticals and aerospace; it has some world-famous architects and plenty of smart lawyers. But take away the credit-fuelled housing market, and Britain is an economy with all its eggs in one basket. The stench from Canary Wharf is proof of what has long been suspected: many of those eggs were rotten. Larry Elliott The Guardian
Full article: This week the crash went nuclear, and Britain will feel the worst of the fallout 
Philip Delves Broughton: Lehman exposes Wall Street's moral bankruptcy
It looks as if the prophets of doom may have been right after all, says Anatole Kaletsky. With the demise of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch - and the threatened collapse of the world's largest insurance company, American International Group - we are now unquestionably in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But does this mean that the "real" economy of non-financial jobs, investment, consumer spending and housing also faces its greatest disaster in 60 years, as Alistair Darling has said? Probably not. The real economy and the world of finance can easily move in opposite directions. Much of the bank and hedge fund debt could, in principle, be wiped away without affecting anybody apart from the financiers who were riding this crazy merry-go-round - and that has been pretty much the story of the past 12 months. Anatole Kaletsky The Times
Full article: Hank Paulson has turned a drama into a crisis
The Business Pages: Market chaos after Lehman bankruptcy
If this is the death of Wall Street as we know it, the tombstone will read: killed by complexity, writes Nils Pratley. The complexity lies in modern markets' love affair with derivatives - the financial contracts sold to the world as a way to reduce risk. Got too many mortgages on your balance sheet? No problem, slice them up, package them, sell them on. Worried about your trading partner defaulting? Buy some insurance. The possibilities are almost endless. The gross value of outstanding derivatives is now counted in tens of trillions of dollars. A traditional backwater of the investment banking business has become a principal activity. The underlying philosophy behind derivatives sounds terrific. The weak can get rid of risks they can't handle. But the general practice is very different. Nils Pratley The Guardian
Full article: The day the ticking time bombs went off
And how Labour should respond
This is the time when government really shows its worth, writes Polly Toynbee. It should bolster any financial institution that risks setting off domino collapses and then impose stricter regulation to restore probity and try to stop it happening again. As unemployment rises, a good government borrows and spends to get people back to work, to avoid the destruction of a generation that Margaret Thatcher caused in the early 1980s. We still pay for the poverty she created. Borrow to invest in infrastructure, building high-speed railways, trams or renewable energy, keeping people in jobs. This would be the worst possible time for a tax-cutting Conservative-Liberal Democrat government to arrive in office with economic plans to borrow and spend less. Brown is not a famous eater of his own mantras. Would he follow Keynes and say when the facts change, he changes his mind? Polly Toynbee The Guardian
Full article: As the storms roll in, Brown is left politically naked
The Mole: Whips threaten Labour MPs with early end to their salaries
Polly Toynbee, the great comic figure of the age
Zimbabwe's compromise
There is something nauseating, if not tragic, about African politics, writes Basildon Peta. It happened in Kenya. Now in Zimbabwe. A bad precedent is being entrenched. After losing elections, incumbent dictators bludgeon their opponents and find their way to the negotiating tables and thereafter cling to power. Now, how will Mr Tsvangirai revive Zimbabwe's agro-based economy without reversing Mr Mugabe's destructive land reforms and taking land back from incompetent cronies and redistributing it among Zimbabweans who can actually farm, both black and white. How will Mr Tsvangirai persuade investors to come, without entirely repealing unsustainable empowerment laws which prescribe majority shareholding by black Zimbabweans in all firms? How will Mr Tsvangirai endeavour to accommodate international donor prescriptions for aid without being accused of compromising on national sovereignty? Basildon Peta The Independent
Full article: Call this progress? Not if you care about Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe Today: First the signing - then the street fighting
In Brief
Labour’s feuding warlords
The present rebellion is not as co-ordinated as some believe. These rebels are like tribal warlords in the Afghan badlands - there are enough of them to topple Mr Brown if they gang up together, but they cannot agree on who they want to replace him as leader. Rachel Sylvester The Times
Full article: The physical impossibility of Gordon Brown's survival
John Reid: Labour plotters' secret weapon
Foreign leaders
Who says that travel would broaden Sarah Palin's mind? I wouldn't mind betting that if you were to stand in the arrivals hall at Heathrow and ask each passenger the name of the prime minister of the country from which they had just returned you would get a success rate of less than 5 per cent. Ross Clark The Times
Full article: Who says that travel would broaden Sarah Palin's mind?
Alexander Cockburn: Democrats panic in the face of Palin-mania
Positive energy
At no other time in modern history would the crass political opinions of a coiffed game-show presenter be seen as anything other than publicity-seeking silliness. Even the announcement by Noel Edmonds that his late parents follow him around in the form of melon-sized blobs of "positive energy" visible to digital cameras are not enough for his opinions to be dismissed with derisive laughter. Terence Blacker The Independent
Full article: Welcome to the age of total bunkum
Paying for the Proms
But why do we have to pay for our licence fees and, by extension, the Proms, I hear you say. Why can't it be funded by Coca-Cola, or Sky, or private subscription of some kind? To which I can only say that yes, I suppose it might be so funded. But then again it might not be. Civilisations can decline. Culture decays. The market is an imperfect preserver of heritage. Boris Johnson Daily Telegraph
Full article: Noel Edmonds is wrong to say get rid of BBC licence fee: remove it and you lose the Proms
Feigned belief
Suppose you believed that Heaven exists and that only some of us will qualify to live in it for ever, as the vast majority of Christians claim to. How would this affect your behaviour? As it happens, the vast majority of Christians display a remarkably blasé attitude toward their approaching day of judgment, leading lives almost indistinguishable from those of us open non-believers. Jamie Whyte The Times
Full article: I don't believe that believers really believe
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