Guy Dresser

• You know exactly what the population of Iceland is and can also pronounce the name of its prime minister.
• Even the word 'crisis' seems to have lost its currency.
• Countries pop up for sale on eBay for 99p and get few offers.
• Posters on BBC messageboards stop discussing the undulating pitch of Robert Peston's voice and listen to what he's actually saying.
• The speech bubble on Page 3 of the Sun is given over to discussing the credit crisis.
• Financial market updates displace stories about Jade Goody on the tabloid front pages.
• Bad news stories from government departments are rushed out day after day and not even the Opposition seems to notice.
• Estate agents finally admit house prices have fallen but tell you now is a really great time to buy because the market is stabilising.
• People marketing get-rich-quick property seminars don't get taken seriously any more.
• The Chancellor, writing in the Financial Times, says that "now, more than ever, we need new ideas".
• Your primary school-aged children know that credit crunch is not a type of biscuit and that IMF isn't just a fictional organisation in Mission Impossible.
• You go for a while without noticing one estate agent's mini and then you see a whole bunch of them on the back of a car transporter.
• A pensioner on the evening tube train from Canary Wharf gives up her seat to a banker because she reckons he might need it.
• The Ivy rings to ask if you'd like a table tonight or any night.
• There are no spare trolleys when you turn up at Aldi to do your weekly shop.

Do you have any better suggestions? All contributions welcome - please send in your selection.

So, how to tell in advance which banks and financial institutions were headed towards the door marked 'exit'?

City analysts like to pore over spreadsheets, corporate accounts and chief executive comments for nuances and clues as to performance.

I prefer to keep things simple. I used to reckon that any FTSE company which had (1) flagpoles outside its HQ; (2) a country-house training centre; and (3) a corporate helicopter was probably in trouble. Nowadays, however, I study lists of winners at industry award shindigs because, almost by tradition, they're seen as the 'kiss of death'.

Take Icesave. Its website was, until earlier this week, proudly boasting of its victories in two categories at the Moneyfacts personal finance awards 2008, which judged performance over the previous year.

"Best monthly interest account provider" and "best no-notice internet account provider". Tough fought categories, no doubt. But I hesitate to suggest that Moneyfacts' definition of 'no-notice' probably wasn't a reference to the amount of time savers had to withdraw their funds before the bank hit the rocks.

Moneyfacts analyst Michelle Slade says they don't publish the full judging criteria, to prevent product providers from manipulating the results. And she reckons, with some understatement, that the 2009 Moneyfacts awards will be "interesting".

"Well, for one thing, providers have to have been there for the full year to qualify for the awards. I think it's going to be very different next year."

One industry shindig where the 'kiss of death' tag is probably well deserved, though for the organiser rather than the award recipients, is the Bradford & Bingley Personal Finance Media Awards.

Usually held in October, gongs go to personal finance journalists who are deemed to have excelled in the previous year - perhaps this time they'd go to those hacks who predicted the demise of some of the High Street's great names like, er, Bradford & Bingley?

Chance would be a fine thing, however. It seems that prospects for this year's awards do, which would have been the 22nd annual bash, are not that great. A B&B spokeswoman is non-committal: "It's all under review," she tells me. "There will be a decision in the next couple of days. The awards might not take place in their current format," she says. No kidding.

A colleague tells me of a quick way to make cash for anyone who wants to. His neighbours discovered a pile of old taps and central heating pipes they had lying around had more value than they thought. A scrap metal merchant gave them £75 for them. "It's a bubble," the merchant said.

It may be a bubble, but it's proving a lasting one and one that's causing problems in unexpected quarters too. In my salubrious part of Surrey, local churches are struggling to keep their roofs on and it's not because of the volume of their congregations' singing either. Thieves are stripping lead roofing and flashing to melt down and sell on.

It's become a multi-million-pound problem across the country. Police have urged residents to call them if they ever see someone climbing on church roofs. And the churches themselves have decided they can't afford to turn the other cheek. They've tried stake-outs and security patrols. Now, some are investing in special coatings that leave a unique lasting chemical impression on anyone who comes into contact with them.

It doesn't solve the crime immediately, the police still have to find and arrest suspects for that to happen. But it's a hefty deterrent - if they catch anyone climbing on roof tops they can carry out a quick check to discover if they have any traces of the chemical on them - if they do they can then be linked to specific offences and prosecuted.

There's a line in the Old Testament of the Bible where Moses warns the Israelites, "Be sure, your sins will find you out." I'm not sure he had this kind of technology in mind. But perhaps churches ought to be putting it on warning signs.

That'll teach me to write ahead of events! My last blog post was written just two hours before the US House of Representatives voted on the proposed $700 billion 'financial rescue' or 'bail-out' (delete as applicable) of the banking system.

Like many, I expected the politicians to nod it through, despite the huge misgivings of average Americans who saw it as the unwarranted rescue of a lot of irresponsible Wall Street fat cats. As pundits predicted, the vote did indeed prove historic - but not for the reasons they'd anticipated.

I got back home just in time to watch the news unfold on the evening news. Live interviews with traders and bankers on the floor of the NYSE gave a sense of the drama unfolding in front of them. And pundit after pundit queued up to make the same point - that US lawmakers decided to heed the views of their constituents. With elections just five weeks away, the turkeys had finally decided not to vote for Christmas. I'm paraphrasing, of course.

But I'd like to think that the essence of my post yesterday remains true - we still have no real idea how far this crisis has to run and until we sense even the faintest prospect of a recovery (anyone remember Norman Lamont's Green Shoots of Recovery?) things will remain both uncertain and volatile. Despite all the fear and uncertainty, however, it's good to see that some things don't change.

Switching rapidly between channels, I caught the dramatic, live interviews that the BBC and Channel 4 carried from Wall Street and Capitol Hill, their correspondents ad libbing furiously as events moved even as they spoke. Elsewhere, however, it was business as usual. The briefest of headlines about the unexpected outcome of the vote before the presenter moved on to the serious news of the day - Britney Spears has a new album out. And Natasha Kaplinsky has had a baby, apparently. For viewers it was, perhaps, a reassuring end to a chaotic day.

Yes, we all remember the tag-line. And, doubtless, also how we pitied Roy Scheider, playing the part of Amity's hapless police chief and eventual saviour, whose loud protests that the water still wasn't safe went unheard.

Sitting comfortably in our cinema seats and secure in the knowledge that the film had only been showing for 30 minutes, we all knew Scheider was right. Everyone else, of course, from shopowners, to tourist chiefs and even the town mayor, believed that the hunters who'd found and killed a small shark had 'got' the monster that had been terrorising local beaches.

They criticised the policeman for his paranoia - and returned to the beaches en masse. The rest is cinematic history.

OK, it's a slightly flimsy analogy for what's going on in the financial markets but consider this: after the $700 billion bail-out of Wall Street by Congress, the takeover of a host of banks by rivals, by governments and even by administrators, everyone is wondering if that is it. Or are there still more shocks to come?

Unlike Jaws, unfortunately, there is no script. And, worse, we don't know whether this film is supposed to last just 30 minutes - or if it's set to be a 3 hour blockbuster. The signs  aren't encouraging. The face of banking has been transformed. Billions thrown at the markets. Ostensibly uncompetitive mergers waved through. The words 'unprecedented', 'crisis' and 'meltdown' appear in headlines everywhere, every day.

So what to think? Many would doubtless like to know that the entire bail-out represents some form of end-game, a 'beginning of the end' rather than just the end of the beginning.
Central banks can't tell us. They've all been playing a reactive game ever since the sub-prime crisis began in the US last year. Admittedly, no one else predicted the extent of the events that have unfolded since either. And, sure, if they'd acted more quickly or in a joined up manner, some of the subsequent damage might have been avoided.

But hindsight is a wonderful thing - and persuading central banks and governments that they should have stumped up billions of pounds for a concerted bail out, or got regulatory authorities to arbitrarily brush competition law to one side in anticipation of a wave of emergency mergers, would have been impossible in anything resembling normal market conditions.

So, if we were auditioning for heroic roles right now, it might still be too early to say whether we'd be better off as the paranoid police chief or the complacent town mayor.

I have a confession to make. I pulled out of a property transaction earlier this year and left the seller high and dry. I'd like to say it was because of my impeccable sense of timing in all matters financial. That I  could see the UK housing market was tanking and that commuter flats (such as the one I was trying to buy) would tank more than most.  Or even that I was playing hard-ball and but had my bluff called. In fact, it was none of these - my solicitor spotted a show-stopping legal hitch and off I went to rent instead.

It didn't stop the estate agent questioning my decision though. Was I trying to 'gazunder' the seller, he mused aloud in a subsequent phone call. Fortunately, though journalists (and estate agents) are sometimes accused of being only loosely acquainted with ethics, I was able to show I had the purest of motives. But, according to estate agents, gazundering - where buyers demand a last-minute price drop - is back with a vengeance.

"It's increasing and we're finding the average reduction purchasers try for is between 5-10 percent, says Richard Cotton, senior partner at London-based property consultants and surveyors Cluttons. "The 10 percent figure is mainly at the top end."

So far, in London and the southeast of England anyway, sellers still mostly have plenty of equity in their properties and there hasn't been a rush of forced sellers. Unhappy vendors will also tell would-be gazunderers to get lost if they try it on at the last minute, particularly if - as is often the case - they have already dropped the price by 10-20% to attract them in the first place.

But this could change as thousands of homeowners on low fixed term mortgages find repayments rising to much higher, unaffordable levels. They may then have to sell for whatever they can get.

"We're not there yet. But in those circumstances the chances are that you might not find a buyer for up to six months," Cotton told me. "Then my advice would be to take it on the chin. Get on with your lives, cut your losses and move on. If you're in a chain, the obvious thing is to share the price cut with those further up the chain."

Discussion of gazundering usually provokes extreme reactions. In the same way that gazumpers,  those who trump others when the market's going up, infuriate the losing bidders, vendors usually express contempt for those who try it on when the market's going the other way.

Unlike Scotland, where your bid is considered legally binding, the price you pay for a house in England and Wales isn't fixed until the exchange of contracts. Up to that point, anything goes. So gazundering isn't remotely illegal. But is it ethical? Visiting an estate agent in southwest London last week to to check property details, I asked a negotiator what he thought. I don't know why, I guess I was just interested in his reaction. The question provoked a wide smirk - and gales of laughter at the next desk. I had my answer.

Is it me or is Schadenfreude on the march? In the midst of all the headlines about wealthy bankers facing the 'new reality' of unemployment and comment about them not being terribly worthy of sympathy on account of their vast past bonuses, it's as well to remember that not everyone can be sanguine about being cast out of work and that every job lost is a potential human tragedy.

 When big employers like Lehman Brothers collapse and others shed vast numbers of staff, there will be numerous people who face severe difficulties. And that's something that some of those who seem to be revelling in the bankers' misfortune would do well to remember.

In a crisis as deep and as global as this it won't just be a few "City slickers" who lose out.

It's certainly a lesson a fellow customer in my local Starbucks could well heed. Admittedly I was still waiting for my morning caffeine shot to kick in and was therefore half asleep at the time, but I came to in irritation as I absorbed his tasteless and feeble jokes about the meltdown in the financial system and the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The man, himself smartly dressed in thick City pinstripes and silk tie, seemed barely able to contain himself as he waxed lyrical about the waning fortunes of all those highly paid bankers and their erstwhile bonuses. How he laughed.

Cue a brief injection of compassionate common sense from his friend and there came a teeny little bit of sorrow for all the back office and administrative staff at Lehmans who would, he admitted, not have benefitted from the same safety cushion of bonuses as their former masters would have done.

No bonus, no Schadenfreude? That's alright then.

Long queues and unmanned tills figure at the top of Britons' list of retail gripes, according to new research today. But there's so much more to customer dissatisfaction than this. Anyone who's been dragged out to their nearest High Street on a busy Saturday by their other half will know what it feels like to be an unwilling participant in what is sometimes said to be Britain's most popular leisure activity - shopping.

Never mind the tedium of walking at snail's pace through packed and overheated department stores. Or the difficulty of attracting shop assistants who seem to have perfected the 1,000-yard stare. Or the endless hanging around outside fitting rooms while your partner discovers that they're not a size 12 after all and all the outfits picked have to go back and be replaced with bigger ones.

No, it's just the fraught nature of it all. The long queue to get into the multi-storey car park and the extended delay when you want to get out thanks to the fact that there's only one pay machine in operation which will invariably cost you extra in parking charges.

The way you are assailed with loud, pumping rock music in practically every shop, inflicted with surly teenaged Saturday staff who simultaneously know everything and nothing at all. And the long, long wait to pay while the person in front struggles to remember their PIN at the cash till. Not to mention the virtual bombardment of 'closing down sale' messages, charity muggers and middle-aged women with clipboards who want to stop you at every corner for their 'quick little survey'.

There's no escape even when you've finished shopping. Want a quiet drink or a bite to eat? Bad luck. You can try one of the identikit ex-bank premises that now offer 24/7 drinking venues, complete with the obligatory crowd of unreformed puffers loitering outside. Or you can take pot luck in a pseudo French-style pavement cafe with a curly sandwich and over-priced cappucino.

There's simply no escape from the hordes. Even the retreat back home in the car will be to no avail, stuck as you will be in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam all the way out of the town centre. Get back and sigh with relief only to listen to the plaintive cries of regret as your partner recounts the list of stores that we just didn't have time to get around to and the dreaded words - 'never mind, we can always pop back tomorrow'.

For, truly, on the seventh day man has no rest.

So what can governments do to eliminate panic or turmoil in international markets? "Whatever we can", according to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. "Not much", according to ex-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan.

Brown and Greenspan may share many things, such as a disdain for small talk and soundbites, but listening to the two men is an illustration of the key differences between central bankers and politicians.

Brown's presentation at Reuters today was a confident rattle through Labour economic policy in which the Prime Minister employed virtually every word and phrase of his standard vocabulary - stability, confidence, long-term commitment, flexibility, adaptability, raise our game, take no risks - to reassure his invited audience of senior business figures of his intention to manage the UK through the current international market turbulence.

Greenspan's, however, was a softly-spoken and measured analysis of his 40 years' experience as an economist and record four-term rule at the US Federal Reserve in which he scotched suggestions that you can do that much to eliminate turmoil.

His conclusion appeared to set him at odds with Brown's assurances that the government would do what it could to offset the effect of turmoil.  Like it or not, he surmised, there's little you can do about it.  So it's impossible, then?

Greenspan warmed to his theme: troughs follow peaks as surely as night follows day. The current turmoil was an accident waiting to happen. If it hadn't been the US sub-prime lending problems, some rupture elsewhere would have emerged to upset stability in the international financial markets.

If Brown or his Chancellor, Alistair Darling, were perturbed by this assessment of an apparent mission impossible, neither showed it. Darling was on his feet even before Greenspan had departed the podium. He thanked the ex-Federal Reserve chairman profusely for his insights and then promptly explained exactly what the UK government now plans to do to tackle the current market turbulence and its impact on consumers, savers and investors here and elsewhere.

Measures include some widely trailed changes to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, a proposed beefing-up of banking regulations to focus on liquidity as well as solvency and a much stronger role for the IMF. He even appeared to hint that EU legislation governing how Central Banks operate as lenders of last resort might need to be clarified - perhaps to enable them to do this covertly, mused some of the audience afterwards.  

Greenspan may believe governments can't prevent turmoil but it doesn't look like it's going to stop Darling and Brown trying. And if the UK government is also simultaneously going to try and amend or ‘clarify' EU banking legislation to help them do it, it might not be the International Monetary Fund they need but the Impossible Missions Force and its key operative Mr Nathan Hunt.

High inflation these days tends to be something most people read about in the newspaper rather than experience directly themselves, but if predictions from Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, turn out to be correct, we could soon see an end to the benign inflationary times that we've seen over the last twenty years.

Homeowners struggling under the weight of a huge mortgage might welcome a hefty dose of inflation if it eats away at the real cost of their home loans but pensioners struggling to get by on fixed pension payouts won't be so grateful.

Successive governments saw the reduction of inflation as their number one priority in the 1980s and 1990s but, according to Greenspan, economies are increasingly in the grip of forces that central banks and governments may be able to do little about.

So does the prospect of inflation worry you? Or is Greenspan's assertion that the prospect of recession is 'still less than 50:50' of more pressing concern - did you think its chances were even that high? And what of Gordon Brown's reputation - did he get out of the Treasury just in time or will he still have to shoulder his share of responsibility for whatever lies ahead? Tell us what you think, we'd like to hear your views.