Bank on it!

Dark days indeed, especially if you have shares, own an overvalued house you need to sell or have lost your job and source of income.
It is little consolation that things will eventually improve and this, financial burst bubble, will become just an historic tide mark.
The ‘get-rich-quick’ syndrome is part of human nature and we are unlikely, genetic engineering notwithstanding, to eradicate it. More insight into the details of company accounts might have focussed attention years ago into banking practices which created the domino structure now causing havoc. Regulatory oversight was insufficient and/or powerless to intervene in the past and will not improve much in the future, 700Bn US$ or not, once the tide has receded. Detailed regulation is anathema to our culture, not just to our banking system.
Confidence will return, it always has, even if it requires some healing time.
The main trouble with banks is that I don’t own one.

English housing is a European disgrace

There can’t be many people in England at the moment who have not seen the wealth disappear they had believed rested solidly in their house. Once again, the English housing market has collapsed, readjusting inflated equity valuations, squeezing household liquidity and creating unmanageable debt.
The English housing market has always been a source of amazement to foreigners. Our houses are the smallest in Europe, poorly built and designed, badly kept up and horrendously expensive. German and French houses have nearly 40% more living space than those in England and their prices have remained relatively stable for decades, comparing more than favourably. Only the English have no double-glazing, wall and roof insulation. Drainpipes, telephone and television cables festoon the unpainted and often crumbling outside walls. Front and rear gardens are often car parks littered with rubbish.
Despite these obvious detractions there has been a headlong rush for generations to continually pay more for housing property, bolstering consumer borrowing in the knowledge that next year prices will be higher and asset values will increase.
Not that the individual could do much about the situation, but banks and mortgage societies have been incompetent, to say the least, in their own self-interested management of the housing market. Whereas no-one would lend £10,000 for an £8,000 car, banks and building societies have been giving out 125% mortgages without compunction. Top-up financing for extensions and improvements were happily given on very optimistic valuations.
Alright, it would seem the Americans are no less stupid. The very size of that disaster has shaken the credibility and fundamental stability of much of global finance, including the viability of many pension funds, and has precipitated the English and Spanish housing declines. None of this was unforeseen and warning signs have been there for years.
A recovery will take time, but the US and English housing markets will stabilise. When that happens, will everything go back to the status quo pro ante? Will the banks and building societies have learned a lesson? It would be nice to think so, but history has a habit of repeating itself.