A note in this early British morning.. this evening in the US..
It's been an amazing week, all in all.
Briefly.. we've seen the collapse of Lehman Brothers..the Fed has bailed out insurance giant AIG, Merrill Lynch has been acquired by Bank of America and in the UK, Lloyds TSB has acquired HBOS..
Yesterday alone we saw Central banks from the UK.. the US.. Europe.. Canada.. Switzerland.. Japan injecting $180bnAM into their money markets.
This is the fourth such joint effort, since the onset of the credit crisis last year.
Now.. the news has helped to bring down the interest rate at which banks lend to each other.. one of the key factors behind the problems in credit markets..
.Investors are looking for safer places to put their money.. and as we thought quite a while ago, the price of gold, regarded as a haven in troubled times, rose to
$871.20Am/ounce after recording its biggest one-day gain in history on Wednesday..
It's been mentioned that Lloyds TSB has released details of its £12.2bn takeover of HBOS.. Fleshing out some of the details..the deal values HBOS shares at 232p each and is expected to lead to cost savings of £1bn a year and.. as is to be expected.. will lead to significant job losses.
Russia's main stock exchange suspended trading for a second consecutive day as the government tries to halt a sharp drop in share prices and restore consumer confidence..
And.. to top it off for Thursday..the British Financial Services Authority has announced steps which will restrict short-selling of shares while New York's attorney general has launched a probe into short-selling...
Now the Dow has rebounded some 400 points at the close.. and the Nikkei is cautiously up at the opening.. about a point or so..
But what will happen when the US markets reopen later this morning will reflect the thinking of those who take the bailouts into effect for what they are, and understand what position they will put the economy in for quite some while to come..
Britain's Footsie should be comforted by the Lloyds/HBOS merger news.. but it would be surprising if there's much movement anywhere, until it's seen what's going to happen on Wall Street..
Then.. there's Monday to take into account..