Well what would happen is that if Greece defaulted and couldn't pay its debts, all the Greek bonds that are held in other banking systems across Western Europe would suddenly have no value. You could as a knock-on effect create a banking crisis in Western Europe.
People rightly want our political leaders - on all sides - to concentrate on minimising the damage to jobs, living standards and our savings from the banking crisis.
So perhaps the most worrying single remark made by a responsible banking official during the current crisis came from Jochen Sanio, the head of Germany's banking regulator BaFin. He warned on Aug. 1 that his country could be facing the worst banking crisis since 1931 - a reference to the collapse of Austria's Kredit Anstalt, which provoked a wave of bank failures across Europe.
We are inheriting the worst financial system since the Depression. We're inheriting a situation - when people go back and study major banking crises a quarter century from now, the one that America developed in 2007 and 2008 is going to be one of those crises.
And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.
There was, of course, a global financial crisis. But our Labour predecessors left Britain exceptionally vulnerable and damaged: more personal debt than any other major economy; a dangerously inflated property bubble; and a bloated banking sector behaving as masters, not the servants of the people.
There has been a banking crisis, a financial crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis, a geostrategic crisis and an environmental crisis. That's considerable in a country that's used to being protected.
