Dear reader,
don't start to worry I will not start to comment on the everlasting struggle for the White House between Democrats and Republicans.
The point i am referring to is that the current dramatic events on the financial markets in Europe expose a lack in understanding of the importance of the economy to our society. So due to lack of this understanding it might be explained why the possible default for Italy was not first topic on German TV on Nov 8th. In fact it was not topic at all that the yield of Italian bonds reached and surpassed 7%. After markets demanded the resignation of Mr. Berlusconi it was widely expected that things will start to ease for Italy after this „demand“ was met not only from the markets but also from some if not most of his European colleagues that were simply fed up with his empty promises.
So far so good and while Mr. Berlusconi was focus of attention also by news media while being the key word to the now famous exchange of grins of Mr. Sarkozy and Mrs. Merkel at the last summit supposedly successful in rescuing the future of Greece and the Euro zone it is now where simple market data are ruling the fate of Italy and of the whole Euro zone where those media abstain from proper reporting.
Immediately it shoots to my head what an economist said or better asked the last days on Twitter: Where did we (economists) fail. How could things deteriorate the way they did ? Well as with this expert on economics ONLY is it a bit with modern day journalism where
a.) most stories are based on reports delivered by news agencies such as Reuters, AP, DPA, ANP etc etc
b.) many journalists are used to report on political developments and perhaps those of „human interest“ but so far the economy was just for some specialists who had the opportunity to speak for a few moments on the days winner/losers on the stock market or got a similar column for the newspaper where they could fulfill the needs for the few who formed a group of special interest (e.g. business people, investors, „rich“)
