What caused the problem - greed - on a scale that should have never been allowed, bundling ever big bad investments and selling them as good ones, the net result being that the banks can no longer stay solvent, and are dropping like flies. Look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, between the two companies they secured over $6 trillion of mortgages in the US, and they couldn't stay solvent.

And yet companies keep getting bigger, Bank of America is buying Merrill Lynch and Barclays is interested in buying some divisions of Lehman Brothers. You would have thought they would have seen sense already and kept they size they are, with the economic climate such as this you shouldn't be looking to grow the business but keep it stable and if the business grows well done you.

Growth is not the be all and end all, being able to say we weathered the storm is much better than we grew 10% in 2008 but went bankrupt in 2009. There are lots of sad looking people at the moment and its only going to get worse, unless the banking industry wake up and smell the heap that has been mounting at the side of them. Halifax says it has enough capital to avoid liquidity problems, yet its stocks tanked 40% the stock market seems to think otherwise, and here lies the problem. The banks have had such an easy time they haven't had to worry about a thing, confidence in them has been assured and now what little confidence there was after the collapse of yet another bank, has evapourated to leave us the common man in a very precarious position. 

We haven't seen the last bank to fall yet, and I haven't got that much confidence that system will change quick enough to ensure the damage is limited. The global economic down turn is here to stay and will be with us for a while yet.

Update: So the banks are still being there usual selves, Lloyds TSB is in talks with HBOS the owner of Halifax to take it over, but rather than pay its perceived value they are paying last weeks share price of 300p.

In the UK we have become used getting ripped off around every corner, it stinks but we are British so we put up with it. My problem is that some of the films now available particularly Al Gores documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" £10.99 At this point the noveltywore off, I can have this shipped to me from amazon £6.22 in less than two days.

I aren't apposed to paying £6.99 for a film, but £10.99 for a film that you can buy in the shops for less than £7 I think its pushing it. Us Brits whilst being hard done by after getting the long of the stick for so many years we have all become cynics, and easily see where profiteering is taking place. We saw it with the iPhone, which didn't do anywhere near as well as planned (see here) We also see it with practically every computer or gadget, when you get nearly 2$US to £1GBP and the prices of things are the same in dollars as pounds you know there is something wrong.

Unless iTunes get more content up in the store and stop stupid pricing, they may just take off. Who am I kidding it will take off whatever apple do, its what their good at. I would like to think that Apple at least get some semblance of order in pricing and price match with the High Street.

You would think this isn't a big problem and its all about preserving the cultural identity each of us have in the UK. The problem is that whenever you try to buy or submit a form online, it takes 5mins instead of 2mins, just because you have to search for what system the website is using.

The different ways of putting countries in a list:

• England
• Great Britain
• United Kingdom
• UK
• Britain

There aren't that many, but when there is a list box, a couple of hundred countries long its get really really, tedious. Leading you to only one sane solution, if you ever meet the designer of the website (yes thats specifically aimed at the guys & gals who design the CollegeBoard site) tell them the importance of considering there cousins across the pond, and then proceed to batter them over the head with a world atlas. Until they submit to changing their forms to us UK.

Now that was painless wasnt it?