Martin Wolf of The Financial Times tends to be a cautious sort, and he's been one of the folks urging calm throughout the whole financial crisis. So I'm finding myself a bit freaked out that's he's now writing things like "The time for a higgledy-piggledy, institution-by-institution and country-by-country approach is over. It took me a while – arguably, too long – to realise the full dangers. Maybe it was errors at the US Treasury, particularly the decision to let Lehman fail, that triggered today’s panic. So what should be done? In a word, 'everything.'" And that's the comforting part of the column. The unsettling bit comes towards the end, when he says, "The finance ministers and central bank chiefs of the Group of Seven leading high-income countries will soon convene in Washington. For once, these are the right people. They must travel with one task in mind: restoring confidence. History will judge their success. These people may go down as the authors of another great depression. It is a destiny they must now avoid, for all our sakes." Eep.
