Commercial paper, which enabled companies to raise short-term money at a cheaper rate by bypassing banks, proliferated in the 1960s.

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Mortgage REITs borrow short-term or adjustable-rate money (the federal funds rate has plunged from 6.5% in January to 3.5% today) and use it to buy longer-term mortgages or mortgage-backed securities, playing the spread between the two sets of interest rates.

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Banks, as Mr Smithers points out, essentially take two risks: credit risk the risk that a borrower won't pay the money back and what is succinctly dubbed maturity-transformation risk taking in short-term deposits and lending the money out for a longer term at a higher rate of interest to companies or the government (by buying government bonds).

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The operator argues that, because it is already losing money at an alarming rate, it cannot withstand further short-term pressure.

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They might be investors who lent money to the bank by buying its short-term bonds, with a Libor-linked interest rate.

BBC: Libor scandal: Who might have lost?