When the UK's largest banks are having to consolidate all their loans into one new affordable monthly payment, who do they call?
These are odd times we are living in, to use an understatement of Titanic proportions. We've been commenting over the last few months on the current crisis as it unfolded. Did we predict this was on the way? Yes. Did we predict the scale of it? No, nowhere near the extent that the last 10 days have witnessed.
Today's Sunday papers have done what they do best, taking a considered and in-depth view of the current situation. They have also been hamstrung by the speed that the World is having to move, as I type, 4 of the 5 largest UK banks are working out just how much taxpayers' money they need to stay afloat. £35 billion is the current figure being bandied around, but by the morning, who knows how large this will be.
Taking counsel from my peers who are working in the media sector, in finance, and in the legal sector, there seems little cheer. Deckchairs are being arranged as the iceberg moves rapidly closer, as everywhere there is paralysis and financial confusion. When one of my good friends was personally responsible for 1% of all the mortgages granted in the UK last month (by value) then the world has truly been turned upside down.
The trouble with this meltdown is that technology has linked everyone across the Globe. We have no transparency or clarity, which is generating digital panic, which occurs everywhere, all the time.
Personally, I have absolutely no idea whether there is light at the end of the tunnel. And if there is, whether it is just an oncoming train. I cling on to the advice given by my favourite lawyer. "The sun will carry on setting, and carry on rising, and the world will keep turning. Everything else is mere detail, which you mostly can't control".
Odd times indeed.
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