Quick links for Lehman

Can be found at this excellent post on Economist’s View.

Lehman is down, Merrill Lynch is sold – this is far bigger than the collapse of Bear Stearns (especially since it appears to be absent a straight bailout).

I suppose we will have a clearer indication of what is going on tomorrow. Expect our dollar to suffer on the back of the higher perceived risk in the world economy – the level of volatility today (without any clearly terrible economic information, although manufacturing was quite average 😉 ) indicates that expectations of increased risk are already feeding into investor movements:

Source (NBNZ)

Just remember there are two main risks to NZ from any foreign crisis:

1. Cost of credit (as we have a large stock of debt),
2. Our export prices/volumes.

These aren’t independent – if the second factor stays solid, our ability to fund debt (and people’s willingness to lend) will stay fine. So lets just hope our milk and meat stay popular 😛

On a worrying note, what really has me concerned is the fact that The Big Picture hasn’t been updated in the last 24 hours. This guy updates all the time (over the last 18 months I haven’t seen a day when he hasn’t updated!), and he would normally be all over this issue – maybe the crisis has made him a bit busy at work as a trader!

I do enjoy Arnold Kling’s prediction based on the latest events though:

I predict that lots of folks pull all-nighters, and there will be more dramatic developments before the markets open tomorrow.