Blocked pipes

My four year old son has a nasty habit of blocking the toilet with large wads of toilet roll. Unblocking what he has clogged up is not a pleasnt job, and it tends to fall to me.

As many of you will be aware, the present financial problems stem from the fact that banks are reluctant to lend to each other because of a breakdown in trust. As a result the pipes of the financial system are blocked.This is a classic failure of the market to function efficiently. Unblocking these pipes is proving difficult for governments around the world. These issues are the focus of one of the many useful article in this week's Economist magazine.

If you don't know your LIBOR from your EURIBOR, or are simply curious to find out more about the 'money markets' then you can't do better than to read this article.