The global financial crisis has ravaged the world’s credit markets, pummelled stock markets and frozen wholesale money markets for borrowing lasting any longer than a few days. Banks have found funds harder to secure for nearly a year. The failure of the investment bank Lehman Brothers was the catalyst that led investors to realise that cash in banks was not necessarily safe. In recent months four of the 10 largest mortgage lenders – HBOS, Northern Rock, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley – have either failed or been forced into the protection of larger banks. But how is the credit crisis affecting the real economy? How scarce is mortgage finance? Can consumers still use their credit cards when they fancy? Are companies, who started the credit crisis cash-rich, still able to gain credit, and at what rates? Are savers profiting from banks’ need to raise funds? In a series of articles, Chris Giles and Norma Cohen take the temperature of conditions in Britain and examine how credit affects households and companies. Some of the results are surprising, but there is no doubt that credit is becoming scarcer, raising the prospect that the downturn will become a serious recession.