• @OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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    418 months ago

    Europe had been moving towards the slaughterhouse for years, and by 1914 a conflict was all but inevitable—that, at least, is the argument often made in hindsight. Yet at the time, as Niall Ferguson, a historian, noted in a paper published in 2008, it did not feel that way to investors. For them, the first world war came as a shock. Until the week before it erupted, prices in the bond, currency and money markets barely budged. Then all hell broke loose. “The City has seen in a flash the meaning of war,” wrote this newspaper on August 1st 1914.

    Apart from this, nothing in the article is worth reading.

    • @fckreddit@lemmy.ml
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      278 months ago

      Investors have their heads buried in there arses or rather in the charts and balance sheets. I think they delude themselves into believing that by buying selling what essentially amounts to promises, they think they are doing important work.