Monday’s Dispatches, How the Banks Bet Your Money and Lost, on Channel 4 was a masterfully edited (OK, by my film making nephew) documentary that clearly explained the credit crunch, Northern Rock and other dodgy aspects of finance for a lay audience. For once, it concentrated on the main losers. No, not listeners to Radio 4’s Money Box, but poor, working class Americans who have lost their homes and neighbourhoods.

Watching it, it struck me that, in this case, Adam Smith’s famous aphorism should read,

… he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which dumps millions of other people in the shit whilst he keeps the million pound bonuses he is paid for creating the whole fucking mess.