"Europe, we have a problem", "I don't like Mondays", "Are we crashing?", "Polish economy will suffer" are the black (and red) headlines in the major dailies in Poland today.
Elżbieta Krajewska reviews the press.
"Stock markets are plummeting" writes POLSKA daily, followed by: "Fear of recession rising. Tens of billions of euros disappear from European bourses into thin air" in DZIENNIK. GAZETA WYBORCZA adds: "Players begin to sweat when Monday comes because recently the day has always ended in catastrophe. Yesterday prices were falling everywhere. The Warsaw bourse fell to an all-time low." And RZECZPOSPOLITA joins in with a doomful forecast for Poland, writing that analysts are being more careful about the future of the Polish economy, that Polish currency is weakening – and that in spite of the government's confidence Poland too will feel the effects of the storm that is buffeting the whole world.
The papers also note that since Monday, CNN is reporting live from Warsaw, four times a day, in a week-long series of programmes devoted to Poland. But not everyone is happy... GAZETA WYBORCZA bemoans that CNN launched its "Eye on Poland" reports with a standupper in Warsaw's Old Town, actually a post-WW2 reconstruction. The station counters that it's a historic place, a memento of the war – and symbolic for the dynamics of change in Poland. Yes, fifty years ago, grumbles the daily. Other papers – to mention DZIENNIK – balk at the fact that among the ten most famous Poles such as Pope John Paul 2nd and Lech Wałęsa, CNN has placed pop diva Doda and racing driver Robert Kubica...
Finally, some good news from ŻYCIE WARSZAWY, the Warsaw city daily. "We will have an antidote for ugly billboards and giant advertisements that obscure windows. A new law has been today put on the desk of the minister for infrastructure. It could be an aesthetic rescue for all of Poland". The daily recalls such advertising ideas as a giant phallus-shaped rock on a banner opposite a church in Kraków, a 400-square-metre television set that hangs in the windows of a house in mid-town Warsaw or a giant phone book instead of a period facade in the Old Town. The lucrative outdoor advertising sector obviously isn't happy. "We can just as well ban all red cars from the city" the daily quotes one ironic comment.