Beyond the blither of the mainstream media, economists speak out:

What Lehman Will Mean for the World

Originally Posted by Max Keiser, markets analyst in Paris
"There's a decoupling in the wind, America is essentially finished as a global economic power.

"The US dollar is now finished as the world's reserve currency and we are going to see now some other country rise up and take its place, most probably China."

[SNIP]

"Suddenly last summer, credit was unavailable, and then banks who need credit to live start to tumble.

"So this is gaining pace [and] there's going to be no credit for banks because you're talking about $700 trillion worth of debt in the global economy.

"The entire GDP [Gross Domestic Product] of the world is something like $60 trillion, so this has a long way to go as you deflate all of this debt back to something more sustainable."

Originally Posted by Alister Heath, editor of London's "City A.M." financial newspaper
"Everybody in the West, [or] at least a lot of people, have pensions and these pensions invest in the stock market, and a lot of the shares are actually the shares of banks.

"And when bank shares get hammered, people's pensions get hammered, so everybody loses."

Originally Posted by Andrew Critchlow, managing editor of "Dow Jones Middle East" in Dubai
"I think the impact is going to be quite profound.

"I think this is a defining moment for world economies, it's a defining moment for the United States, it's a defining moment for all of us that will remember [this] for the rest of our lives.

"People who were around in the 1920s, at the time of the Great Depression - that experience stuck with them for an awful long time.

"And I think that the economic events that we're currently seeing in the world at the moment - they can only be described in similar terms.

"Certainly in my career, I've seen nothing that compares to this and it's difficult to quantify at this stage where all of this is going to lead."

Originally Posted by James Galbraith, economist and professor at the Univerisity of Texas at Austin
"There is a threat --- it lies in these vast markets for credit derivates, credit defaults, swaps, mortgage backed securities and derivitives from them, which are not liquid at the moment, which are impossible to value and which result from the breakdown of prudent regulation and prudent financial practice over the past 30 years, but particularly in the last decade."