Its rather unfortunate that what started off as a request for emergency funding from the Bank of England by Northern Rock has escalated into a mass withdraw of funds by its customers. What is more interesting is that if this information had not been made public the bank may have survived and the act of all its customers withdrawing their cash will effectively lead to a further fall in the cost of the banks shares and a possible take over by a rival bank.

An unfortunate side effect of the above is that people are starting to worry about the integrity of their banks. The real problem now is that the media is adding to the panic by showing people pictures of queues outside banks.