IT is always a bit surprising just how quickly things can go wrong and the certainties of life begin to unravel.

As little as three weeks ago, it would have seemed laughable to most of us that the major institutions which provide the bedrock of our financial stability should be asking for government help to the extent that they will, in effect, become part nationalised.

The banks that I grew up with, having gobbled up smaller competitors over those years, have become so vast and the sums of money in their ‘control’ so unimaginably big that it seems virtually impossible that a crisis of this scale could emerge.

That there would even be rumours – which there were – of runs on the major banks was jaw-dropping. Perhaps the safest place for the savings is a box under the bed after all.

It is the psychological effect of all this that seems the hardest part to come to terms with. Most people over the age of ten has a bank account and we are all used to the solidity of that. It is people who mess around with shares who are taking the risk, that is how it works. This is no longer the case.

In some strange way there is some feeling of comfort that the men in suits – right from the top – have got this so disastrously wrong. Their trademark arrogance may have to be put to rest, at least for the time being.
But it is not only these formerly smug financiers or faceless investors that lose out. It is just about everyone – except cobblers, apparently, who have seen business increase in recent weeks as people return to repairing rather than replacing. Funny old world.

It is easy to blame someone high up and remote but isn’t it really the case that we have all played our part in fuelling this. How many of us can truly say that we live within our means, with no credit cards, loans or mortgages? Any one of these relies on the banks taking on trust that – on the promise of future earnings – we will pay them back. Their risk is calculated but it is still a risk. And given the huge amounts involved, if we ask them to take that risk – even in a modest way – then the chance is increased that the balance is going to tilt in an unfavourable direction.

This is, of course, a very simplistic view and one which misses out any number of variables and economic concepts that I will simply never be able to grasp, but it does seem to come down to credit and all of us wanting more than we actually have.

While I think of it, it was rather difficult not to smirk a little at the headline on Thursday referring to the referendum on changing to Central European Time, which read that a ‘clock change would damage finance’. Surely, at the moment a time change is the least of Jersey’s financial world’s worries.