Market wobbles

Here we go. The first sign that the credit crunch might cause us all a bit of pain. See the Beeb for some market news. Meanwhile the FT explains what is going on behind the numbers. Basically you can trace a lot of it back to the mortgages offered to people lower down the income scale in the US, which to me points up the fact that working people are more connected financially than they ever have been.

Workers capital might seem like a bit of an alien concept to many on the Left, but to me its usefulness as a perspective is actually growing. Whilst it started as away of utilisiung share-ownership in a progressive way, it is now spreading into new areas (TU campaigning on privarte equity being an obvious example) and it still needs to go much further. The labour movement needs to get a handle on these things, if only so we can stop people like the bloke below (from the FT article):

At least some people are benefiting from the pain being felt by American homeowners. Word on Wall Street is that the head of one trading desk, after making a lucrative bet against securities backed by mortgages to people with bad credit histories, has had T-shirts made up that cheerfully proclaim: “I’m short your house”.