With a "crisis Cabinet", a "war room" and financial fighter planes heading for Iceland, Gordon is striking a deliberately Churchillian pose, writes Rachel Sylvester. He evokes the "calm determined British spirit" of the Blitz. The problem for Mr Brown is this. Churchill lost the 1945 election. Even if Mr Brown wins his war, he may not win the peace. The Democratic Speaker of the US Congress, Nancy Pelosi, memorably declared "the party is over" - but we are still clearing up the debris of the night before; the hangover has not yet arrived. By the time Britain next goes to the polls, recession will be like a dull throbbing headache, with people losing their homes, their savings, their pensions and their jobs. The Government will have had to impose tax rises or spending cuts - or both. Rachel Sylvester The Times
Full article: Brown's boom will end only in another bust
Business Pages: World markets stage historic rally

Call it the bonfire of the certainties, says a Guardian leader. Not so long ago, Britain's biggest banks were assumed to be robust and well run. And for the past couple of decades, bankers claimed they knew best how to go about their business, and that the safest thing government could do was get out of the way. Yesterday, as three of Britain's high-street banks applied to the taxpayer for funds, all those assumptions were upended. It barely seems credible that the public should own 60% of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and 40% of the merged Lloyds TSB/HBOS, but there it is: the commanding heights of British banking are in public hands. The economic landscape has shifted; the premium now is for new ideas on how to take advantage of this transformation. Leader The Guardian
Full article: Bonfire of the certainties
Cash was king - now gold is God

Well over half of Britain's banks will fall under state control in the course of the next few weeks, says Peter Oborne. The government portfolio includes the majority of our most famous names: the Halifax, the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest and Lloyds -  alongside Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, already taken into the public domain. All these banks are now accountable not to shareholders but to politicians. They will make their decisions not on commercial good sense but on the basis of what is politically acceptable. We have already seen a small flavour of this with the publication of the merger document two weeks ago between Lloyds and HBOS. Lloyds (whose chairman is Gordon Brown's crony Sir Victor Blank) was obliged to make a promise to retain jobs in Scotland to suit the political priorities of the Labour Party. Peter Oborne Daily Mail
Full article: No alternative, perhaps, but it'll be us who foot the bill for this bonanza of socialist indulgence

It is one thing to chastise style-obsessed shopaholics who run up massive credit card bills by living beyond their means, writes Tracy Corrigan. But pouring scorn on people who, struggling to climb on the housing ladder, jumped at the offer of 100 per cent mortgages peddled by the banks, seems grossly unfair. Gearing up to buy a thin-walled, two-bedroom flat a stone's throw from the North Circular looks more like desperation than greed to me. In America, there is evidence to suggest mortgage brokers were encouraged to push products at sub-prime borrowers in order to feed the securitisation machine, earning big fees for investment banks. Did that happen here? Tracy Corrigan Daily Telegraph
Full article: It would be nice if someone said 'sorry'
The Sheriff who refuses to carry out evictions