Will Hutton wrote an article with the above title in the Observer today. He accurately reflects my mood. He wrote:

If more people understood what has happened in the British and American banking system, the financial crisis would only be containable by the immediate partial nationalisation of every bank in Britain and America.

He's right. It's only ignorance that is stopping panic right now.

Let's be clear: our banks won't lend to each other. In banking terms the only thing that is worse is a refusal on their part to pay each other. When that happens the system fails. We're a hair's breadth away from that.

As Hutton notes:

This week, I expect the nationalisation of the stricken Bradford & Bingley to join Northern Rock. It is but another in a long sequence of interventions that are imperative to save the system from its own proclivities. Once again, the left is coming to capitalism's rescue.

If we do so it will be by the skin of our teeth.

But what really scares me is how little is being said or written about what happens next. There is no structural thinking on how to link this with housing, secure savings or anything to do with pensions. I'll keep offering my bit, but I'm really looking forward to others joining the debate. Or is it really all going to be left to members of the Green New Deal group, who it seems to me are the only people on the case right now, partly because many of us foretold it?