How can investors trust that those in whom they have invested, or to whom they have lent, will use the money prudently and properly?
"My amendment will ensure that the smaller banks and building societies, who have lent responsibly, will not be adversely affected by these changes," Mann said.
Nor do banks that have lent trillions that will never be repaid post gruesome videos.
"If this campaign is successful," Sauven says, "it will be because people like Jarvis have lent their support and their ability to reach out.
This is all code for a simple and familiar plea: Do something that will protect investors, particularly creditors who have lent a lot of money to banks and countries that now appear to be in serious difficulty.
"Crashing the Dollar: How to Survive a Global Currency Collapse" [7] flatly says we are "digging the biggest hole in U.S. history," one that is so deep, says author Craig R. Smith, "that you can hear the voices of Chinese creditors asking one another if they will ever get that $900 billion they have lent us".
Unless China is re-writing financial history, much of that money will have been lent without due care to businesses and individuals, and many of them will never be able to repay much of it.
The British bank RBS, 70% of which belongs to you and me (the government's share will soon rise to 84%), has lent or underwritten £8bn for mining the tar sands.
If UBS loses that battle, it appears that it will have to lend the money on terms agreed to in June, before the lending markets drastically tightened.
In fact they will have to lend €130 billion in total.
