The latest £50 billion bail out of the British banks may be unavoidable. But to judge by the stock market reactions and the comments made on press and radio, few seem convinced, even after several days. There seems to be no real understanding of what is going on and what the effect of any particular policy will be. We make no claims either in this regard, but making credit more readily available...

Gordon Brown will propose a £12bn fund to help small businesses survive the credit crunch at a meeting of fellow European leaders today on how to tackle the problems currently crippling the financial markets. Speaking at Downing Street before his departure for Paris, Brown said: “We are seeing, in addition to the national action we are taking, that these global problems about oil, about the...

The dissection of the economic crises gathers pace with a flood of articles on the web sites of the press. It is, apparently, all caused by greedy traders in the City and Wall Street. The ones with red braces. Nice idea to blame these unlovely people and easy to do but…