With the whipsawing of the markets last week, it has begun to dawn on market people and officialdom that we are not in a "crisis" but in a long process of deleveraging and distress. No sooner had the US securities dealers been shored up than the commodities markets were hit with collapsing prices. Even the crashes of 1987, 1998, 2000 and 2001 came to an end within the limits of people's reserves of physical energy. That does not seem to be true this time.

Traders, credit managers, central bankers, regulators - they're all getting the thousand-metre stare of post-traumatic stress disorder. The credit people seem to be the most overtaxed. They just weren't staffed for all the analyses and hard decisions being demanded of them.