But a substantial blow to the value of small investors’ holdings could prove a blow to the entire economy.Full story, page 16Comment page, 17. The trigger for Wall Street’s slide is the fear that the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, might soon raise interest rates to prevent the booming economy from stoking inflationary fires. A rise in US interest rates would, as happened in 1987, upset the balance between investing in shares (at present expensive because of the long bull market) and investing in bonds.This year there are perhaps more parallels with the Great Crash of October 1929 than with its more recent cousin. Share prices in London fell by more yesterday than at any time since John Redwood challenged John Major for the Tory leadership last July. The curbs on computerised trading, introduced after that disastrous fall of 23 per cent in the Dow Jones share price index within a single day, mean that a drop in share prices looks more like a bungee jump than a nosedive these days. A big fall in prices is likely to be followed by a modest rebound.This happened during the course of yesterday’s trading, with an early drop of more than 166 points in the Dow Jones erased to a mere 16-point fall by lunchtime and before an afternoon decline and rise.Even so, the value of shares in the US has fallen by nearly 7 per cent since Independence Day, making it the biggest event in world financial markets for more than two years. Although Wall Street ended the day slightly higher, most commentators see the events of recent days as the start of a bigger collapse.
However, the experts do not expect a repetition of the October 1987 crash.

Shares in London and elsewhere fell sharply as the US stockmarket continued the steep decline that began over the Fourth of July weekend. Yesterday brought the fourth fall in succession, leading many financial analysts to conclude that the “correction” expected since the start of the year has finally begun Earlier wobbles were reversed within a couple of days. As Americans flocked to see the movie Independence Day, the spectre of a crash on Wall Street hovered over the world’s financial markets yesterday. Their appalling mistake was, so often and so publicly, to support the decision to let the march go ahead. Let them now get on with Bruton and Spring in rescuing the future from the flames.Robert Kee is a historian and broadcaster. The reaction of the nationalist minority to an RUC turn- about which involved not just giving in to Orangemen but beating up the inevitable and relatively peaceable nationalist protest, was itself inevitable.Memories in Northern Ireland ignite as readily as the houses. It was understandable that John Bruton and Dick Spring should presume that this had been so, but mistaken to say so publicly.Major’s and Mayhew’s argument that no democratic police force operating within the law should be under Governmental control is faultless.

The Orangemen may have been thinking about the Boyne and Portadown in 1642, but the nationalists were taken straight back to 1969, when the RUC was beating up protesters.And what is it that makes this memory particularly dangerous? This was the moment that enabled a virtually decomposing IRA, whose pursuit of the republican Holy Grail “betrayed in 1921″ no longer seemed of any reality to most nationalists, to assume credibility again by attaching their principle to the defence of that nationalist minority.But apart from Annesley’s decision, what brought about the even more dangerous trouble between the two governments? The British Government and Annesley must certainly be believed when they say that ministers played no part in the decision. However bleak the situation may be, to accept (as was sometimes the case in the past 25 years) that there was no further positive way to go, is an abandonment of the human spirit.But while they continue to try and try again – which is the only hope – it is worth being clear about exactly what went wrong.Sir Hugh Annesley’s decision to allow the march to go ahead after all was so inevitably disastrous that it still seems unbelievable he could have taken it. For the most alarming feature of all in this situation has been the rift appearing between the British and Irish governments – the only two forces able to contain the catastrophe.
Fortunately, there is every sign that they have scared themselves, and that, by letting verbal bygones be bygones, they will continue to refuse to accept that there is no more to be done. This danger is that the fine words of the joint Downing Street Declaration of 1993, about overcoming the legacy of history, may be going up in flames too. At any minute, the old burnt-out landscape of 1914, 1922 and 1969 may be with us again The real fear is that no action will be taken to prevent it. You don’t need to be a householder in Northern Ireland, of either the nationalist minority or the unionist majority (and remember, the unionists see themselves as a minority in Ireland) to be aware of the acute danger that lies in wait. “I got the feeling they weren’t taking me seriously,” she says, adding: “if I was a Catholic, I would have got a move straight away.”The names of the families have been changedAnger and no peace, page 2 Politics of fear, letters, page 15.