Introduction

The Credit Crunch is the most serious crisis in banking in several generations.

Financial institutions have lost hundreds of billions of dollars, house prices

have plummeted in countries from the U.S. to Asia, and millions of people

will lose their homes. The prices of stocks and bonds have plunged. It is

not just a matter of plummeting prices either: the Crunch has come oV the

financial pages and become a key social and political issue. It can even be

argued that it was the deciding factor in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.