British Banks Stock Crises: Jitters World Stock Markets

Watching CNBC yesterday i was just amazed at how fragile the world economy is as i witnessed the effects of the British Banks Stock crises and its rippling effect to other world stock markets.Yesterday morning British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Lord Chancellor Alastair Darling announced a $ 88 billion bail out plan to marshal the credit crises that was affecting the British banking sector.

I am not an expert on these things i would rather leave that to my friend Bankelele but what amazed me is how the other world stock markets were being immediately affected due to the financial crunch, for example:

• The Tokyo Stock exchange closed at 9.38 % down
• Russia,Indonesia,Ukraine suspended trading on its stock exchange
  
• European markets suffered losses of up to eight per cent, including a 5.18 per cent fall on the FTSE, followed quickly by falls on the New York Stock Exchange.
• In London, the FTSE 100 shed 5.18 per cent to finish at 4,366 while in Paris the CAC 40 fell 6.39 per cent and Frankfurt DAX was down 5.88 per cent. There were declines of 5.51 per cent on the Swiss Market Index, 5.20 per cent in Madrid, 5.71 per cent in Milan, 7.36 per cent in Brussels and 7.68 per cent in Amsterdam.

The State bailout plan is similar to the $700 billion fund to purchase defunct mortgage assets from troubled financial institutions proposed by the U.S. Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr.The American Government had to recently step in and nationalize companies like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and American International Group(AIG), which were on the verge of collapse.

I wonder what the effect is for the Nairobi Stock Exchange....but im sure its not good especially for Companies such as Barclay's Bank of Kenya.Oops just seen Mr. Chris Mwebesa 's Nairobi NSE CEO' s statement indicating that trading at the NSE' s floors was suspended yesterday after the market almost lost 5% of its value.