It is now a month since Bear Stearns told the New York Federal Reserve that it was about to file for bankruptcy protection, triggering a market drama. Wall Street now hails the event as the beginning of the end of the credit crisis.

Lloyd Blankfein, head of Goldman Sachs, says we are “closer to the end than the beginning”, while John Mack of Morgan Stanley, says the crisis is “in the eighth inning or maybe the top of the ninth.” A baseball game has nine innings.