That's a big slump.

I'm keeping a close eye on the FTSE share price. As of 11:51AM, the share price is at 4700 or so, a fall of 5% on yesterday. That's a 14% slump in a month, or a 30% slump compared with this time last year. The Dow Jones, in comaprison, has been acting somewhat like a ball, bouncing up and down between floors and ceilings. It has only lost 21% of its value in the last year. Germany's is similar. This tells us one thing, economically. When this crisis hit about 6 months ago, we were hearing that we were the best placed economy in the G8 - that simply cannot be true now.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel seemed to have completely flatfooted the rest of the EU on her apparent desicion to secure all of the deposits of the German banks. However, that's not going to be put into law, so make of it what you will. Merkel is much more bound to the Reichstag than Brown is to the Commons (although I can't claim any great knowledge of the German poltical system, so I may be wrong there) and I sense that she's been reigned in by her party. That's caused the 5% slump across the EU.

In other news (because I've been ignoring my blogging duties lately) the Lord of Darkness returns to the government, along with Peter Mandleson. What really makes me dislike this reshuffle is that no voter has actually said "We'd like Mandy to help run the country." Mandleson is now the appointed Minister for Buisness, in an increasingly unelected and unaccountable government. Its been glossed over by the press, but for anybody who actually gives a jot about true democracy it's just another stab at the democratic system.

I don't fancy the long haul. I'd prefer Brown to lose now, not in 18 months time. This way, he gets remembered as an Alec Douglas Home rather than a Jim Calaghan. But let Brown make his own bed and lie in it. It's just a great excuse for the Lib Dems to plan out where it's going to strike for it's 100 MP goal.