Ah, China.

So, of course, the news story of the day is that the Chinese market took a sharp nosedive in response to the government's concern that all the immense speculation going on in the Chinese stock market is going to result in an economic meltdown. The Chinese gov't made some policy change, though I forgot what it was. (as I understand it, everybody and their grandmother is involved in the Chinese stock markets...with people taking out second mortgages and high interest bank loans, and then investing it all in the stock market...which if you follow the chain reactions, leads to massive economic catastrophe if the confidence bursts...because, after all, confidence is 95% of the value of money, right?)

Anyhow, a dive in the Chinese marketplace now means a massive nosedive in the US, European, and Japanese marketplaces...which are the big'uns.

I really don't understand enough about the state of the economy to comment or make predictions...but my totally uninformed gut instinct over the past year has been that the market has been far too exuberant and far too bullish. I can't quite tie all the threads together, but the slow disintegration of the public markets in favor of private equity deals in excess of 45 billion dollars, the rise and peak of (what I consider free radical) hedge funds, the never-ending stream of mergers and acquisitions, the fact that Google stock was valued at around 465 bucks a share with a market capitalization a little more than a third of GE (I don't get it.), massive global instability, two emerging rogue nuclear powers, a failed war, and instability in the energy sector don't seem to add up to "Super Fantastic Economy Time!"

This isn't to say that I have any idea what I'm talking about, or that I make any particular predictions as much as to say that my ever-deepening pool of pessimism and doubt make me feel like a recession wouldn't surprise me in the least.

That being said, what happens to all of us corporate Wall Street lawyers? They're certainly not concerned about the careers of first-year associates...I bet they're fretting over those payraises now!

(This was an exceptionally useless post. I know. Just thought I'd post something.)