The yen and the dollar edged up against the euro today, Wednesday, as falls in equities and oil prices dampened investors’ appetite for riskier assets.

RBS Will Eliminate up to 9,000 Jobs; Mortgage Delinquencies Rise 7%; Rio Rebuffs Asia Steelmakers Discount Demands; Retail Sales Dive Sans Wal-Mart; Moody’s: More Than Half of Latin American Companies At Risk; CEO Confidence Hits Record Low; MGM in Talks to Refinance Debt; Audi Sales Fall in March

The mobs are forming… Give the sans-culottes a chance…and they’ll turn violent. So far, two bosses have been held hostage in France. Employees wanted something the bosses either couldn’t or wouldn’t give.

MSCI world equity index down 0.85 pct at 212.56… Rally after UK bank rescue package evaporates… S&P ratings downgrade on Spain hits euro

A whole lot of flation goin’ on…it should be onwards and upwards from here on out. What will happen when we see a real bottom…the new economies start to pull away from the old ones. When the working man was king…and more!

One quarter of one percent isn’t really that much, is it? Not when you compare yesterday’s Bank of England rate cut to the more aggressive measures taken by our cousins at the US Federal Reserve in recent months.

As markets from equities to commodities succumb to ever-wilder mood swings, many private and institutional investors are, quite sensibly, hoarding cash.