So tell me why I don't like Meltdown Mondays...In short, Monday saw the announcement of the 'worlds biggest bankruptcy' as prestigious US investment bank Lehman Brothers suddenly collapsed. The shock reverberated around the world as stock markets plunged at the news, with £93 billion being wiped off UK shares in two days - not helped by the little reported fact that all their computers crashed for most of the Monday. An overloaded system having its own meltdown or a conspiracy to slow down the panic selling - who knows?!

Meanwhile, in New York, the Lehman workforce was left high and dry due to the ease at which capital is moved around the world. Each day, usually all the company's capital was transferred out of America to circulate on the high seas of the international markets. Except on this day, with the bank going belly up, the employees realised that no money was going to be coming back - leaving them whistling for their outstanding pay. So as the news broke, they downed tools and hastily stripped the offices of anything of value before heading to local bars for the mother of all binges before their expense accounts were frozen.

The fallout saw Western governments desperately shovelling cash into other once-all-powerful institutions threatening to go the same way (the Federal Reserve pumped in $85 billion to prop up failing insurance company AIG), and rubberstamping the creation of new banking mega-monopolies. The Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch for a nominal sum in the US whilst here in the UK, Lloyd's merged with HBOS, owners of the Halifax. The new company will be barely be troubled by the burdonsome competition so revered by free-marketeers as it alone will control over a third of all the savings and mortgages in Britain. All the precarious financial eggs seem to be going into ever fewer baskets...