You can't buck the market, oh no. You've got to let the market decide. For the last 30 years, this has been the mantra, first of Thatcher and her cronies and then of the bleeding Labour party. The City boys knew best - intervention would be foolish. And now all of these supposedly-unbuckable financial institutions are needing to be baled out by government money, both here and in the US. This whole situation is coming as cold comfort to those of us who maintained all along that the market couldn't be trusted to run a whelk stall, and that a balanced economy requires intervention and heavy regulation, but, hey, it's something to cling to. With any luck, it'll be the start of a new age of scepticism and questioning in politics, but chances are the big public will remain just as bovine as it ever has. I despair.

I post the following as catharsis for anyone who has ever been let down by technology: