Breathe Into This Paper Bag

Matt Frei at the BBC has a good essay here about the current economic troubles. Lines that caught my eye:

I rang my banks in the UK this morning.

One had the phone operator giving me his personal guarantee that the bank will not collapse.

Fine then.

The answering machine message of another bank had been switched from piped Mozart to a special recorded announcement about insuring your deposits in volatile times.

That is like the captain of the plane telling passengers to read the flight manual for the emergency landing.

The safety of our deposits is something that we would dearly like to take for granted.

A friend in London told me about all the Lehman dads who had suddenly gathered with their children at the school gate for the morning drop off.

A whole generation of Masters of the Universe is about to master the school run and the trip to the supermarket. Personally, I feel that any schadenfreude is immediately trumped by a gnawing fear that worse is still to come and that all those comparisons with the Great Depression may be more than just an excuse to play some old black and white footage on the TV.

I know from some friends that their sound businesses are in mortal danger because banks refuse to honour the credit lines which they need in order to function.