"Firestorm sweeps world stockmarkets" : the headline on the front page of today's (Melbourne) Age.
Samuel Pepys diary entry, September 2 1666
"Having staid, and in an hour's time seen the fire: rage every way, and nobody, to my sight, endeavouring to quench it, but to remove their goods, and leave all to the fire, and having seen it get as far as the Steele-yard, and the wind mighty high and driving it into the City; and every thing, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches, and among other things the poor steeple by which pretty Mrs.--------lives, and whereof my old school-fellow Elborough is parson, taken fire in the very top, an there burned till it fell down: I to White Hall (with a gentleman with me who desired to go off from the Tower, to see the fire, in my boat) ; to White Hall, and there up to the Kings closett in the Chappell, where people come about me, and did give them an account dismayed them all, and word was carried in to the King.
So I was called for, and did tell the King and Duke of Yorke what I saw, and that unless his Majesty did command houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the fire . . . "
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'Rudd's View on the Economy'
On ABC.Radio National's current affairs program P.M. a few nights back Mark Colvin introduced the item 'Rudd's view on the economy' with this progression of definitions :
"A crash happens when markets realise that assets are seriously overvalued, and brings them back down to earth.
A panic is a step on from that when markets no longer have any benchmark for what assets are worth, so they stop lending against them.
They no longer know the value of value and that means a period of chaos when no-one knows where the bottom of the slope is."
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"Get Me My Mighty Bucket, someone!"
