This type of story is why you must read UK papers :) Not a peep of this stateside.
Pakistani Investors Riot Over Falling Shares Prices
- Pakistani investors and traders ransacked stock exchanges in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad today, reacting furiously to a share-price rout that has decimated the life savings of many.
- Police and paramilitary officers were drafted in to protect the Karachi Stock Exchange after a thousand-strong mob stoned the building, smashed windows and chanted anti-government slogans. In the eastern city of Lahore, investors burnt tyres and blockaded the local bourse.
- The violence followed a 35 per cent fall in the value of the benchmark Karachi Index in the past three months on the back of concerns over the stability of Pakistan's fragile coalition government, rocketing inflation levels, and the weakness of the rupee.
- Protestors took to the streets following the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan's removal on Monday of a 1 per cent daily limit on share price declines and a ban on short selling. The measures had been imposed to stabilise the market. After they were lifted shares fell more than 11 per cent in three trading sessions, wiping out another £2.5 billion in value.
- Kauser Javed, the head of the Small Investors Association, demanded that share prices be frozen at their current levels. He said: "If things continue this way, you will hear of suicides. The regulators only favour big brokers and investors."
- Sayem Ali, the Standard Chartered economist, said: "Together with inflation, a depreciating exchange rate and worries over fuel prices, the main risk to macroeconomic stability comes from the weak coalition government."
Parse that last statement for a moment. If I did not tell you which country we were talking about - you could make the case it applies just as well for a certain 1st world country.
And... regulators only favor big brokers and investors? Check.
I continue to be amazed in Europe and Asia people take to the streets when social issues (or financial in the case of the oil/energy protests across Europe). Here we, the sheep, just nod quietly as the great transfer of wealth from the many to the few continues unabated year after year. Hell, we don't even bother to show up to vote en masse. I'd pay good money to see the terrified look of Paulson as a mob of angry Americans descended on Washington. :) One can dream.
Did you like this article?
's
