… But far and away the most important thing here is just that, if these concerns about sovereign debt were to spread to a wider range of countries – and I hope the measures taken at the weekend and the measures that will now be taken will stop that and prevent that – but if they were to spread, then banking systems everywhere in the world would once again be exposed to concerns about potential losses on their holdings of sovereign debt.

And that is why it is absolutely vital, absolutely vital, for governments to get on top of this problem. We cannot afford to allow concerns about sovereign debt to spread into a wider crisis. 

Dealing with a banking crisis was bad enough. This would be worse…

Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England – unleashed.

Is anything in politics or economics or indeed morality truer than this:

Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They [socialists] always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them