The government rescued RBS only because the public needs the bank to supply credit and to provide a payments system.

ECONOMIST: Bankers

In the end the European Central Bank reacted to stop an impending credit crunch in the banking system, injecting hundreds of billions of euros into the system, liquefying the banks.

FORBES: Five Ways Markets Can Avoid Turning Japanese

For instance, one European bank that operates in several countries has implemented a credit risk management system that enables it to use analytics to improve the pricing of its credit products.

FORBES: Risk Management Comes of Age

The Bank of Japan should rapidly flood the banking system with new credit, ending the decade-long dehydration of liquidity.

FORBES: Japan: Falling Off The Cliff

Despite several rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, and additional efforts by the central bank to pump cash into the banking system to ease the credit crunch, banks are still finding the need to raise additional capital by either slashing their dividend, as National City Corp. did last week, or selling stakes to outside investors.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Despite several rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, and additional efforts by the central bank to pump cash into the banking system to ease the credit crunch, banks are still finding the need to raise additional capital by either slashing their dividend, as National City Corp. (nyse: NCC - news - people ) did last week, or selling stakes to outside investors.

FORBES: Cayne Quits As Bear Stearns CEO

This is partly the fault of a primitive banking system: there are no cheques, few credit cards, and paying by bank-transfer means an hour or so in a smelly queue.

ECONOMIST: Russian love in a cold climate

By 1931 the stress in the global system was about to take down institutions at the opposite end to America: Credit Anstalt bank in Vienna sparked the 1931 banking crisis, which quickly spread to Bank of the United States (see my October 2009 film on 70 years after).

BBC: Thinking outside the 1930s box