The fall-out from September’s financial turmoil has put banks in such a funk it appears that they are no longer talking to each other.

The tensions in money markets are so high that we have witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of central banks not only providing liquidity, but in effect becoming the market. So while the European Central Bank, for example, has been making huge injections of emergency liquidity, it has been taking in even larger amounts in record overnight deposits at low, penalty interest rates.