Comment, analysis and other offerings from Tuesday’s FT,
Comment: Let fairness triumph over corporate profit
Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s minister of finance, writes: Global growth has slumped and its financing is in disarray. Once again the limits to institutional rationality are self-evident. It is not that we were not warned. The historical record repeats itself: confidence gives way to exuberance, panic is followed by decline, retrenchment precedes reconstruction.
Analysis: When newspapers fold
Obituaries for the news business are being written in newsrooms around the world as advertising revenues that long subsidised the cost of newsgathering shrink, just as digital media usurp print’s role as intermediary between advertisers and customers. The crisis is affecting not just newsprint: most news magazines, broadcast news outlets and newswires are also suffering.
Comment: Reforms key for central and eastern Europe
Radovan Jelasic, governor of the National Bank of Serbia, writes: Central and eastern Europe’s development has been unbelievable in the past two decades, in all respects: politically, economically and socially. But the financial crisis has thrown much of that progress into doubt.
Opinion: Managers must listen before disaster strikes
The FT’s Michael Skapinker writes: My column last month about the pain awaiting whistleblowers resulted in e-mails and calls from several of them. Their pain is even worse than I imagined.
John Authers’ The Short View: Rallying
Was that it? Stocks are in the middle of a rally. By midday in New York, the S&P 500 was up more than 15 per cent since it hit a low at the ominous level of 666 on Friday, March 6. Other markets are also in the party. Can the rally continue?
Opinion: Back to the future will be a painful journey
The FT’s Philip Stephens writes: Peer through the fog of bad news to a time beyond recession and you can glimpse an outline of how things may look when boom-and-bust begins to fade in the memory. The government, everyone seems to agree, will have a bigger role in steering, or at least regulating, the economy; the City of London will be a smaller and, by and large, more sober place.
Lex on grim repos
Thursday marks the deadline for the first round of subscriptions for the term asset-backed securities loan facility, the programme designed to kickstart consumer lending. Do not expect a rush of applications, however. Although the government’s support of borrowers should eventually attract investors back into, for example, packaged car or consumer loans, that is only half a solution. To fully revive the asset-backed security market also requires the rebirth of repos.
Editorial comment: Let the sunlight in
Many responses to the financial crisis have been leaps into the dark. But that is not a reason to avoid turning on a light. Details of AIG’s counterparties have been released, illuminating some of the companies effectively being bailed out by the US government. This should only be the start.