THINK!: Black Monday and the story you should already have read.

I'll go out on a limb here and post this. You'll have to take my word for it that I haven't seen or heard any news of the Asian markets overnight, nor the European openings. I am going to post this, and then I am going to go and have a look.

Below you will find what I wrote on my blog A Place in the Auvergne just now making my daily alternative narrative for Sunday 26th October 2008.

Normally I don't write myself, I just let the news tell the story, and it's all about story, something the newspaper industry has lost sight of.

I have never written, in the course of doing the Auvergne blog since January 1st, 2008, anything about the day to come, in this case Monday, 27th October.

I hope I'm wrong and only the Warren Buffet like patriotism of American investors can prevent it when the NYSE opens later today.

What has this got to do with the International Herald Tribune?

If you read the IHT carefully, none of what is going to happen today should come as a surprise.

If you are surprised, then the way the story has been told to you since January 1st, 2008 has been wrong.

The traditional news hierarchies of newspapers, which A Place in the Auvergne ignores, clearly aren't working.

IW: Last Friday, in the markets, it was bad. I haven't given a moment's thought to them until now, but this was a tipping point weekend out there in The Shop. The talk has moved from meltdown to panic.
At the time of writing (Monday 27th October 2008) I haven't checked the Asian markets overnight, nor the European opening prices. I haven't looked at any news save the daily article index of the IHT for Monday - that is to say, news from over the weekend. I haven't listend to a radio, we don't own a television to turn on. I don't feel I need to. I know.
I would say the markets, on Monday, 27th October, 2008 are going to be black, pitch black.

Here in The Valley I have not had one single conversation with one person about the financial meltdown, neither with friends on Friday night, nor on Saturday at the protest march against the closure of rural services, nor yesterday when a friend dropped by with some cheese. In the Auvergne, not many of us own stocks, or have much debt, we are close to the land and the food it brings, close to the wood to heat to our homes, water to drink. This is not our problem.

Yet.

But here is something I heard just now, while I was making this post. According to a source at the post office bank in our local town (with a catchment area of 24,000 people), the Post Office bank received €24 million in cash deposits, money withdrawn from the town's local banks and moved to the state owned/backed post office bank.

Think about that.

And if you believe in omens, there were three major earthquakes yesterday and here this Monday morning the dawn was a burnt red of a type I have never seen here in three years.

Now I hear thunder and it is raining.

READ AN ALTERNATIVE IHT DAILY NARRATIVE AT
A PLACE IN THE AUVERGNE

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