Drastic times, drastic measures(TT DecJan09 p40-41)

If this time last year someone had said to me that we would have lost Lehman Brothers, that Goldman Sachs would no longer be an investment bank, that some major financial institutions would be falling over themselves to amalgamate despite the clear competition issues, that others would be part-nationalised, and still others would be trying to avoid that fate by selling equity on less preferential terms to an overseas investor than the UK government was offering, then I would honestly have thought them mad. And yet here we are.