Like everyone else, I'm still trying to sort out what has happened, and so have some notion of what will happen. So far most of the gabble has been political chicanery. Another shoe drops.

So much for tirades against American greed.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says it is ironic that European banks have turned out to be deeper in debt than their US counterparts.

We now know that it was French finance minister Christine Lagarde who begged Mr Paulson to save the US insurer AIG last week. AIG had written $300 billion in credit protection for European banks, admitting that it was for "regulatory capital relief rather than risk mitigation". In other words, it was underpinning a disguised extension of credit leverage. Its collapse would have set off a lending crunch across Europe as banking capital sank below water level.

It turns out that European regulators have allowed even greater use of "off-books" chicanery than the Americans. Mr Paulson may have saved Europe.

Most eyes are still on Washington, but the core danger is shifting across the Atlantic. Germany and Italy have been contracting since the spring, with France close behind. They are sliding into a deeper downturn than the US.

Some of the talk all along has been that the real reason that the US needs to bail out the financial sector is so that it can in turn bail out Europe. I'm not sure who has a global perspective on all of this as well as sufficient detailed knowledge to do useful commentary. I suspect that no one does but that many are burning the midnight oil to get themselves up to speed, and that we are flying blind for the moment.