Panic hits Britsh bank Northern Rock

"Last week, Northern Rock, Britain's fifth biggest mortgage lender and the former darling of the financial markets, was forced to turn to the Bank of England for cash because no City lender would support it for fear the company was about to go bust. When the announcement broke overnight on Thursday [September 13th], ordinary savers followed the City's lead - jamming the company's switchboard and queuing outside branches to take as much as £1bn out in a day", notes the columnist Will Hutton. "This is a full-blown run on a bank, something we have not seen on such a scale since the 19th century, and a measure of the depth of mismanagement, non-regulation and structural dysfunctionality of today's financial system. ... Proud finance has insisted it needs no regulation, that it can be trusted to deploy the nations' savings with care. The trust has been abused."

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