John Lanchester:

If I had to pick a single fact which summed up the cultural gap between the City of London and the rest of the country, it would be that one. I have yet to meet a single person not employed in financial services who was aware of it; I wasn't aware of it myself. I think if I had been, there are two questions I would have wanted answered: how did that happen? And is it a good thing?

This is one of those points of stock-market logic which seems surreal, nonsensical and wholly counter-intuitive to civilians, but which to market participants is as familiar as beans on toast.

Sometimes, when you eat chili-hot food, the first few mouthfuls tell you nothing other than that the food contains chili. It takes a moment or two to detect the presence of other flavors. Bank bail-outs and collapses are a bit like that.

Most of us have had a few drinks at a party and done something embarrassing, usually along the lines of I've-always-fancied-you-isn't-it-time-we-did-something-about-it, but let's take comfort in the following truth: none of us has ever done anything as embarrassing as buying HBOS.

That feeling you get when you've eaten something, and a few minutes later you think, oh-oh, I think that my dinner just said that was a case not of adieu but au revoir? That would be AIG.

Ginia Bellafante:

There used to be a time if you didn't have money to buy something, you just didn't buy it.

Nouriel Roubini:

Things are going to be awful for everyday people.

John Lanchester:

It isn't hard to know how to slay the zombies.

Nobody in power wants to do that. Nobody with power in the banking system, and nobody with power in government. Both the British and the American plans to help the banks are very, very, very expensive variations on the theme of sticking their fingers in their ears and loudly singing 'La la la, I'm not listening.'

The average British household owes 160 per cent of its annual income. That makes us, individually and collectively, a lot like the cartoon character who's run off the end of a cliff and hasn't realized it yet.

We in Britain are, to use a technical economic term, screwed.

The German economy is fucked off a cliff.

The consequences for Britain are going to be horrific.

There needs to be a general acceptance that the current model has failed.

It's becoming traditional at this point to argue that perhaps the financial crisis will be good for us, because it will cause people to rediscover other sources of value. I suspect this is wishful thinking, or thinking about something which is quite a long way away, because it doesn't consider just how angry people are going to get when they realize the extent of the costs we are going to carry for the next few decades.

I get the strong impression, talking to people, that the penny hasn't fully dropped.

Taleb on hedge fund managers:

They are just picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. And sometimes the steamroller accelerates.

Louis CK:

When I read things like, "The foundations of capitalism are shattering," I'm like, "Maybe we need that." Maybe we need some time ... because everything is amazing right now, and nobody's happy ...