No one in the British government's Treasury department had expected March to be easy. Last Monday's economics-heavy review of defence and foreign policy, and the budget that followed two days later, meant that a tough week for its mandarins had already been priced in.
But none of them expected to have to sell a bank for £1 ($1.20).
That happened last Monday, when Treasury and central bank officials eventually brokered a deal for HSBC to buy the UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB UK) for a nominal fee - following the collapse of SVB's California parent.
However, a frantic weekend spent trying to salvage the bank, on which much of Britain's tech sector depended for cashflow, turned out to just be the "warmup act in some ways", according to a senior Whitehall official.
The SVB deal in the UK only provided a respite before a week from hell unfolded, culminating in a rescue operation for Switzerland's secondlargest lender, Credit Suisse, in an attempt to avoid a re-run of the 2008 banking crisis.
On Monday this week, banking shares fell in London and across Europe after the purchase of Credit Suisse by rival Swiss bank UBS failed initially to calm markets. The jitters were partly prompted by the terms, which saw holders of $17bn of Credit Suisse's bonds wiped out, while equity investors were not as badly affected.
Central banks took coordinated action last Sunday to try to shore up confidence by agreeing measures to ensure banks in Canada, Britain, Japan, Switzerland and the eurozone had the dollars needed to operate.
The US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank announced they would boost liquidity through daily US dollar swaps. The change was a modest expansion of an existing programme in which the Fed each week pays dollars to other central banks in exchange for local currency.
Denne historien er fra March 24, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra March 24, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
We're making a music video-but I can't play, or even act
I am in a lifeboat station on the south coast, standing beneath the stern of a rescue vessel, wearing a borrowed fisherman's jumper and holding a banjo. There are lights on me, and I am very much at sea.
BOOKS OF THE MONTH
The best translated fiction
Village people A chilly tone of doom infects these unsettling folk tales, following a settlement from the deep past to near future
The quintessential \"bad place\" is one of the staples of horror fiction. For Stephen King, the bad place - think the Overlook Hotel in The Shining - usually acts as a repository for a long-forgotten evil or injustice to resurface.
A labour of love Haruki Murakami revisits a hypnotic city of dreams and a tale of teen sweethearts, in material he's worked on over four decades
The elegiac quality of Haruki Murakami's new novel, his first in six years, was perhaps inevitable considering its origins. The City and Its Uncertain Walls began as an attempt to rework a 1980 story of the same title, originally published in the Japanese magazine Bungakukai, which Murakami, unsatisfied, never allowed to be republished or translated.
Leading questions The former German chancellor slights her enemies by barely mentioning them-and is frustratingly opaque on her own big calls
Towards the end of her 16-year tenure, former German chancellor Angela Merkel was garlanded with superlative titles: the \"queen of Europe\", the \"most powerful woman in the world\".
Double vision
Is the pay really that good? Do you get bored? We ask 'David Brent', 'Nessa' and 'Ali G' what it's like to make money as the lookalike of a comic creation
Robopop Teen star who does not exist
Miku is a 'Vocaloid' -a holographic avatar that represents a digital bank of vocal samples-performing sellout tours for thousands of very real mega-fans
The show must go wrong
How did a farce about a gaffe-filled amateur dramatic whodunnit become one of Britain's greatest ever exports, the toast of dozens of countries?
Europe's latest radical populist typifies a swing on the continent
Politics in Romania can be a bloody business, especially on the right. The excesses of the Iron Guard, an insurrectionary, violently antisemitic, ultranationalist 1930s political-religious militia, stood out even at a time when fascist parties were wreaking havoc in Germany, Italy and Spain. Given what is happening in Europe today, the events of that period are instructive.
It's high time to tax cannabis and fix French finances
France might not be broke, but the state of its public finances is, well, definitely not good. Total debt stands at €3.2tn ($3.4tn) - 112% of GDP. Interest payments on that debt are the second largest public expenditure after education (which includes everything from crêche, or preschool, to universities) and are higher than the amount spent on defence. And this year's budget deficit is projected to be 6%, three points above the EU's 3% limit.
