As chief executive for a company that is 70 percent owned by the government, a 9.6 million pounds pay package is quite a tidy sum.

It is a package that makes Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester almost as well as paid as the Real Madrid-bound Cristiano Ronaldo.

True the package has caveats - it is dependent on targets including shareholder return and absolute share performance - and is line with other British banking chiefs.

But in these more frugal post-global downturn times does that make it right? In trying to get itself shipshape, RBS has slashed over 15,000 jobs as it received its £20 billion pounds government bailout.

As details of the pay package were revealed it also emerged that RBS, which has been pilloried over the pension awarded to Hester’s predecessor Fred Goodwin, will be spending £300,000 on corporate entertainment at Wimbledon over the next fortnight. Doh!

Given the taxpayer-funded bailout of RBS is Hester worth £9.6m?

By clamping down on credit, Britain’s newly cautious banks are making collapse almost inevitable for many small to medium enterprise (SMEs) who need a financial cushion now, more than ever, as suppliers and customers struggle to pay bills as the economic downturn bites.

Small businesses in Britain, which employ over half of the private sector workforce and annually generate some 3 trillion pounds, typically depend on loans for working capital to tide them over during lean spells.

The latest research from the Bankers’ Automated Clearing Service (Bacs), which processes direct debits for banks, showed a sharp rise in overdue payments, up 40 percent to 25.9 billion pounds last year from 18.6 billion in 2007.

Bacs, which found that the national average for outstanding payments increased 25 percent to 38,000 pounds in 2008, said SMEs waited an average of 41.5 days beyond agreed payment dates for invoices to be settled as firms — especially those in the manufacturing and service industries — struggled with cash flow problems.

With state-sponsored support schemes failing to deliver cash where it’s needed will dwindling bank lending continue to put Britain’s small firms in danger?

If there's one thing you don't want to be, it's the next Iceland.

Since its currency, colossally indebted banking sector and economy collapsed in spectacular fashion in October, the country has become a byword for an economy that has truly hit the rocks.

Within weeks, banking problems and currency falls meant Hungary was being hyped as a "second Iceland", at least until a joint International Monetary Fund and European Union rescue package restored some stability.

Next to win the unwanted comparison was Ukraine.  Having lost at one stage half its value, the currency has somewhat stabilised -- although most foreign investors are very hesitant to hold Ukrainian assets again.  And like Iceland itself, Ukraine is now dependent on an IMF lifeline.

Now, it is Britain in the limelight.  The New York Times as well as Britain's Observer and Daily Telegraph newspapers have all made the comparison in recent days.

For people earning and saving in sterling, it is an uncomfortable place to be and nervousness is to be found in the strangest of places.  During a recent visit to a podiatrist, a Reuters correspondent found the conversation punctuated with speculation about the possibility of an IMF bailout for Britain and angst over cutbacks in the National Health Service footcare budget.

An old Chinese proverb states that it is better to take many small steps in the right direction than make a giant leap and fall back. Judging by the number of bank lending initiatives announced over the past three months, British policymakers are taking this to heart.

On Monday, Britain announced no fewer than eight measures to kickstart lending in its credit-starved economy. Despite pouring 37 billion pounds of public money into major banks last October and pledging hundreds of billions more in guarantees, the government had to admit it needed to take more credit risk off banks' books.

Monday's package is designed to be comprehensive.  It includes -- amongst other things -- a fund to allow the Bank of England to lend directly to businesses, a framework for boosting the money supply if needed, a guarantee scheme for asset-backed securities and the offer of insurance against potentially explosive losses.

None is a silver bullet and the devil will be in the detail. Much of the nitty-gritty of how these measures will work is still not known. 

 It is also likely to be a slow process. The Bank of England's 50 billion pound asset-buying pot is one of the few measures to take effect immediately.  Analysts at BNP Paribas calculate this equates to just 2 percent of bank lending in Britain compared to a ten percentage point drop in lending in the last year.

One opposition politician, Vince Cable, likened attempts to kickstart bank lending in Britain to "giving a kiss of life to a corpse." Colourful. But a revival in bank lending is indeed by no means assured. More steps may yet be needed.

Here are just a few of the memorable quotes to emerge from the credit crisis:

If you would like to contribute please send us your own selection in the comments box below, with a link to where you found the quotes.

PRAISE FROM THIS YEAR’S NOBEL ECONOMIC PRIZE WINNER

“The British government went straight to the heart of the problem and moved to address it with stunning speed. Has Gordon Brown saved the world financial system?” – Paul Krugman.

IT TAKES A CRISIS

“Sometimes it does take a crisis for people to agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago can no longer be postponed”  — Gordon Brown speaking at a Reuters Newsmaker event after announcing the government would put 37 billion pounds of new capital into High Street banks.

LEADERSHIP AT LAST

“I would expect the market will turn around because people have been looking for some leadership and they are finally getting it” - Financier George Soros on the bank rescue package.

LOCAL COUNCILS

“There is no evidence of recklessness by local authorites,” - statement by the British government and the Local Government Association after it was revealed councils had invested some 840 million pounds with Icelandic banks.

PULLING THE CART ALONG

“They’re doing what they can. But it’s like a donkey in the field: you give it lots of carrots but it doesn’t mean it will pull the cart along,” said the head of the rates trading desk at a large bank in London after money markets ignored central bank coordinated rate cuts last Wednesday.

A NEW ERA

“We have now entered a new era for global banking. In return for taxpayers’ money, the state will gain a level of control over their governance, pay, and lending practices,” said Paul Niven, head of asset allocation at fund manager F&C, after Chancellor Alistair Darling first announced a 50 billion pound rescue package for British banks.

NO TIME FOR MORAL HAZARD

“Moral hazard is a concept that nobody can afford when markets are going down at this rate,” Emanuelle Ravano, managing director at Pimco Europe, the world’s biggest fixed income asset investors, said after last week’s co-ordinated rate cuts.

CAPITULATION SELLING

“This strikes me as raw fear, ” said Michael Farr, president of Farr, Miller & Washington after the Dow plunged last Thursday as investors fretted about a global recession. “This strikes me as capitulation selling. You have to clear the sell orders.”

TOO MUCH INFORMATION?

“Investing has become a spectator sport and the daily amount of commentary is unsettling investors, ” said Thomas Russo, partner at Gardner Russo Gardner. “It’s a self-feeding frenzy — you go to sleep and hear Japan is down, you wake up and hear Europe is down then you come in to work and markets here are down. It will go on until values are compelling.”

SHOCK AND AWE

“I guess it’s a shock and awe type move with respect to easing liquidity and improving the current climate,” said Peter Bookvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak & Co, on the co-ordinated interest rates moves.

NO  RESCUE FOR SOME

“Until the day they put me in the ground I will wonder,” Richard Fuld, the disgraced head of Lehman Brothers, told the U.S. Congress in his first public comments since Lehman filed for bankruptcy protection. “I do not know why we were the only one” that was not rescued.

They were widely accused of dithering earlier this week but Gordon Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling have now finally caught up with events and have tried for the first time to overtake them by unveiling a 50-billion pound rescue package for the banks.

The aim is to bolster their balance sheets, increase confidence in them and get them lending again so ordinary financial life can start anew.

Newspapers have generally welcomed the fact that action has finally been taken, though some feel the package on its own is not enough.

Sector analysts have more specific questions about future bank dividends or who will make use of the rescue money.

What do you make of the rescue package? Do you feel more reassured now?

Newspapers generally praised the government move to shore up the banks, saying that whatever the prospects for the success of the “stability and reconstruction plan,” to have done nothing would have been infinitely worse.

They noted how fleeting the effect of the far larger U.S. bank bailout has been so far and called for the UK plan to be accompanied by cuts in interest rates by the Bank of England and concerted action on an international scale.

This weekend’s World Bank/IMF meeting in Washington needs to take a stand-back look at the entire post-war structure of global finance, some suggested.

“This is the right course of action,” the Financial Times  says of the package. “By recapitalising these banks, the government is making a strong statement to the markets that existing British banks will not disappear and will continue to meet their obligations.”

It says the deal must be designed to avoid participating banks appearing to be marked out for vulnerability. All the big banks should be encouraged to use the facility in some form.

The FT calls for the Bank of England to cut rates by at least half a point this week.

The Times thinks only a full point reduction would be enough. “With confidence plummeting, this is the time for bold moves, not incremental changes,” it warned. “In the past year the Bank has continued to play doggedly by the rules at a time when rule books around the world — on competition law, on deficits, on moral hazard — are rightly being ripped up.”

The Independent  sees wider forces at work behind the current liquidity crisis and demanded wider international action to solve it.

“Two tectonic plates are beginning to meet and grind on top of each other,” it says — namely the liquidity crisis and the accelerating pace of recession in nearly all the major Western economies.

“There is simply no point in hoping that individual measures in any one sector or any one country are going to break this visious circle,” it says. “An EU-wide safety net and a scheme to mop up toxic assets is needed. There is a simple message from the past few days: the picemeal won’t do.”

The right-leaning Telegraph and Daily Mail attack the government for what they call dithering in the run-up to Wednesday’s package and demanded assurances about how it will work.

“The government should make explicit what is already implicit — that it will guarantee all bank deposits, businesses as well as private, without limit, for a fixed term, perhaps two years,” says the Telegraph. “No other single measure would do more to restore public confidence in the banks.”

The Mail calls for banks to cut their “outrageous” loan charges to small businesses and to start lending to home-buyers again. “We demand that no City slicker gets another obscene bonus until we get every penny of our money back,” it adds.

The biggest-selling daily, The Sun, says: “This is the only show in town — the alternatives are horrific. All we can do now is hold our breath and hope it works.”