Ostensibly, both the United States and
Britain are in great financial shape, perhaps more prosperous than
ever before. Yet, several times since the advent of the Asian economic
crisis, world finances have been on the brink of a chaotic comedown.
Each time saw a valiant rescue. Yet as noted author and columnist Paul
Johnson recently wrote, "Asia is the detonator-the Big Bomb is in Wall
Street where speculative fever recalls 1929" (The Daily Mail).
Even though there are now far more safeguards
than during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the speed at which the
stock market presently moves is astonishingly frightening, particularly
to those less well versed in new marketing technology. What goes up
can come down very rapidly. The once proud British bank, Barings, was
driven to its knees in just a few weeks by the activities of one renegade
trader.
Wall Street has been riding high, big time.
Yet well-respected financial guru Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S.
Federal Reserve Bank, worries about a crash and has urged marketeers
to effect a slowdown which hopefully will produce what he terms "a
soft landing."
Summing up the situation across the Atlantic,
Paul Johnson writes that "In Europe there are fanatical idealogues,
hell-bent on federalism and a common currency for political reasons,
whatever the economic and financial cost."
Meanwhile a massive International Monetary
Fund cash injection relieved a Japanese economy judged to be in its
worst state since World War II.
Prosperity Without Morality—the Moral Maze
America has been shocked and stunned by a spate of school
killings callously perpetrated by young people-usually one student
murdering and wounding other students. This phenomenon was unthinkable
in the 1940s and 50s.
