Egypt is Jittery over Mubarak's Health

UPDATE: The EGX index lost 3% of its value today, apparently for no reason other than the rumors about Mubarak.

The Egyptian stock market is sliding as speculation grows about the lack of any photographs of Husni Mubarak in his Heidelberg hospital, nine days after his surgery. This comes after the announcement that the tumor removed from his small intestine was benign; the growth had been mentioned briefly by the German doctors but generally ignored in the media until after the biopsy.

At 81, any surgery is likely to take time to recover, but you normally expect a photo of a smiling President in his hospital bed, perhaps talking on the phone to show he's on top of things. The fact that the President not only has not appeared in public but that photos have also been absent is starting to spur rumors back home, as witnessed by the stock market slide and by the Google suggestions that pop up when you search on "Mubarak" in Google News:

The official statements by the German doctors remain positive, but coffeehouse speculation is inevitable when there are no pictures. While there are always rumors, when they build to the point where the markets begin to drop, this naturally catches one's attention. If it goes another day or two without even a still photo, the jitters may deepen.