Of course the bleeding must be stopped and the patient's condition stabilized. My old parable about the financial markets as a person turning up at the ER of a hospital with severe and inexplicable bleeding still applies. I doubt that confidence is easily returned, however.
Confidence is that magical thing which would stop people from taking their savings out of the banks or moving all their investments into gold and under-the-mattress funds.
George Bush spoke about that the other day and Dan Froomkin pointed out that as people don't have confidence in Bush as a president they are unlikely to have confidence in what he says about restoring confidence.īush is not the only voice which has asked for confidence to be returned.