Unfortunately Northern Rock is not the war, it is just a war incident and on top of it only a minor one.

Sir Martin Wolf in “From a bank run to the nationalization of deposits” September 19 takes a Polaroid photo (if anyone in this digital world remembers what they were) and that tells little of the story. Not only because the events that lead up to this Northern Rock moment have been in the pipeline for a very long time but also because, unfortunately, we are still very far away from where we could be able to discern the end of the story and in fact we should all count our blessings if this all stays as the “Northern Rock” moment. Wolf is of course aware of this when he answers his own question on whether this is the end of the story with “a far from it”

The fact then that Wolf raises so early the questions of whether the disaster could have been prevented, whether the crisis could have been better handled and finally on what to do about it in the future can only be explained in terms of a very human desire of wanting to believe its over, looking to numb those fears that Wolf and so many of us share and that make us “tremble at what may happen”.

Wolf sees the events as an “unwinding of past excesses” sort of like shedding some kilos, while I having been much more sceptical of what has been in the doings see the need to unwind much more than that, among other a bank regulatory system that has placed us on the clear course of fewer and fewer bigger banks, until we hit the very biggest final bank bang. For a brief look ahead, read Saskia Scholtes “Credit turmoil set to benefit big banks”, September 19, where you can read on how central banks are already in despair outsourcing their responsibilities to the banks... while naturally crossing themselves.