Global Financial Meltdown

Michel Chossudovsky
Bloody Monday, September 15, 2008. The Dow Jones industrial average (DJIA) declined by 504 points (4.4%), its largest drop since Sept. 17, 2001, when trading resumed after the 9/11 attacks.

The financial slide proceeded unabated, leading to an 800 point decline of the Dow Jones in less than a week. The World's stock markets are interconnected "around the clock" through instant computer link-up. Volatile trading on Wall Street immediately "spills over" into the European and Asian stock markets thereby rapidly permeating the entire financial system.

The Most Serious Financial Crisis since the 1929 Wall Street Crash When viewed in a global context, taking into account the instability generated by speculative trade, the implications of this crisis are far-reaching.

The crisis, however, has by no means reached its climax. It could potentially disrupt the very foundations of the international monetary system. The repercussions on people's lives in America and around the world are dramatic.

The crisis is not limited to the meltdown of financial markets, the real economy at the national and international levels, its institutions, its productive structures are also in crisis.

As stock values collapse, lifelong household savings are eroded, not to mention pension funds.

The financial meltdown inevitably backlashes on consumer markets, the housing market, and more broadly on the process of investment in the production of goods and services. →