World’s owe is world’s woe

Tuesday, 22 June 2010 00:00

June 22, 1837 - Runaway inflation and a speculative investment bubble that burst in a New York financial panic quickly spread to much of the world. In the panic, 343 of the 850 banks in the United States collapsed, fuelling a five-year economic depression and record unemployment.

A Boston editor neatly summed up the situation in two brief sentences that seem just as apt a description of the U.S.-triggered recession that hit the world in 2008. From the St. Catharines Journal, St. Catharines, Upper Canada.

The editor of the Boston Advocate says, of the present state of things, “All the world owes more than all the world are worth, and all the world call upon all the world to pay. All the world, therefore, are in reality worth just as much as they were before the world failed.”