Britons seem to have an abiding faith in the existence of an implicit floor under house prices.

ECONOMIST: Houses and prices

France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom have mountains of debt and feeble share prices, but are protected by implicit state support.

ECONOMIST: European companies

The assumption is that revenues will keep pace with other consumer prices and that the cashflows will be secure because of implicit government backing.

ECONOMIST: The investment attractions of infrastructure

These CDS prices imply that big UK banks are deriving almost no benefit right now from the implicit protection they receive from taxpayers.

BBC: Investors love the UK but not its banks

Without those implicit government guarantees, Pangloss values collapse, leading to a general fall in asset prices, which in turn, leads to loan defaults and losses for the banks.

ECONOMIST: Disaster has spawned a new theory of financial crises