No wonder the US economy is in such a mess if they calculate productivity as output for every hour of work! This means that if automation results in a small reduction in hours worked, for the same output, but a big increase in overall costs, then productivity appears to have gone up! Doh!

Keith Butler, Loughborough, England

Real coinage passing hand to hand distributes the trust chemical oxytocin at the same time. This is how money really works (it is a common object given in trust for something else more unique). All these naughty numbers are proving the point - as will the inevitable hyper-inflation. Gold anyone?

kevin, Lincoln, UK

I am just a housewife. But it seems to me, that the whole thing was about greed. Americans need to start living within their means. My family does. The borrower is slave to the lender. We need to be self sustaining again. This credit crunch is a good start. Time to get our backbone back.

C.Oursler, Colorado springs, United States of America

lending poor people money at inflated rates is not exactly a sound idea but lets remember these people took them on knowing full well they would have trouble repaying the interest. blame the banks yes, but there were two parties involved in the transaction.

Alex, London, england

What Bill Gross doesn't say is more interesting than what he does say. "Opening up the balance sheet of the US ..." means creating more debt or raising taxes the way Roosevelt did. The tax bit was followed by another 50+/-% drop in the Dow. Increasing the debt would undermine T'bonds. Checkmate ?

Steve Elkins, Raleigh, USA

Good morning mustaffa-one of the reasons the US economy is rough is because all our highly educated (and highly paid) CEO's don't have any common sense. They loaned people with shaky credit much more money than they could afford on an adjustable rate mortgage, then raised the rates. Idiots!!

Tony Williams, Rochester, USA

Re Mustaffa's good question, we have been living on credit too long. It should have been controlled years ago and we would be fine now, but the government allowed a free-for-all.

Much of the credit came from equity (rising house prices). Now, prices have fallen so there is no equity to release.

Ian Tinn, Slough, England

@mustaffa
The simple explanation is that massive amounts of money were loaned to home owners who had no way to pay back, very high risk stuff. Banks then packaged these high risk mortgages into "CDO's" which magically got AAA rating. Underlying default cause CDOs to have near zero value. Bang

mot nolnoc, Stockholm, Sweden

credit has dried up because it was so easy and available from 2002-2006. the easy credit of this period led to loans, including but not limited to mortgages, that were issued with lax standards. now they are going bad and banks don't want to lend and in some cases can't lend.

ridge, parkland, fl, us

"Financial Tsunami?" This is ridiculous. The prices of commodities and food are finally coming down and the housing prices are dropping. The economy should be picking up and money going back to the stock market, not out of it.

The panickers have no sense and this is quite odd.

David Powell, Ocean City, New Jersey , USA

Mustaffa - as consumers, we collectively drive the economy. Everything produced, be it goods, services or energy (petrochems, gas) is consumed, or produced as a value adding step to consumption, by "consuming human beings".

Less money in your pocket / out of a job? Equates to less consumption.

Paul Tinker, Henley-on-Thames, UK

The availability of credit is not the problem, the problem is the ability of the average consumer to take on more credit. The consumer based economy that we have is dependent upon spending, but on average the American consumer is broke. They cannot afford to spend, nor can they afford to borrow.

Ryan , Nebraska , USA

really issues is britan dependance on the finacial sector and the lack of the finacail sector to start making people redundant - they are carrying on the same regardless of the mistakes theyve made - if bankers dont start losing jobs and banks concetrate on making profits we are all in trouble

amit hindocha, birmingham, uk

We, the tax payer, need to know just how much each bank/building society has borrowed from the BofE and the quality of collateral pledged. We also need to be told what is the quality of the assets retained by these same institutions and are they of sufficient rating to support our savings/deposits.

A.Williams, Cradley Heath,

Open the US Treasury balance sheet! More debt to close to TEN trillion dollar deficit. Repay and how? Get ready world for a dramatic decrease in the prevailing standard of living. The world monetary imbalance resolved by inflation. OR establishing a monetary order consolidating existing currencies

Baird, East Hampton, USA

i know this may sound daft by why has credit dried up so much? can someone give me an answer. i cannot believe that with unemployment hovering around just 0.5m (see US Treasury statistics this week) the US can be in such dire straits. Also aside from consumers there appears to be a sound UK economy

mustaffa, eastwood notts,

The recent bounce led observers to think America was truning the corner that was typical but a problem so big created by incompetant management and greed of the banks doesn't blow away after 6 months its just not feasible. It will be late spring before we see real shoots of progress and no earlier

Robert D Marshall, LONDON, UK

The banks have blown a huge hole in the amount of capital they have left through sub prime/derivatives fraud. Unfortunately we can't do without them. But they will be so tightly regulated in the future they won't be able to pass wind without asking Treasury permission.

David Nammory, Liverpool,