Everyone now knows how the credit crunch began with American banks giving seemingly crazy loans to poor or uneducated home-buyers who had little or no chance of repaying them.
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Early hopes that the problem would be restricted to these so-called sub-prime borrowers have been dashed and the credit crunch is spreading rapidly to engulf homeowners in middle-class suburbs and on to squeeze industries and jobs in America and around the world.
No-one now seems to knows how big the problem is or where it's going to end, but all seem to be agreed it's set to get far worse in 2008.
In this special series for BBC World Service, reporter Michael Robinson delves deep into the innards of the credit crunch to try to get some answers.
Part Two: Any Escape?
Part two of the series addresses the dangers of the present crisis turning into a full scale global recession.
What are the seemingly desperate attempts of bankers, regulators and politicians to prevent this from happening?
What chance do they have of success? And does history have any lessons to offer?
With house prices and stock markets already beginning to fall, the debts which are secured on them look ever more fragile. Can anything be done to stabilise the situation, and avoid ever more pain in the real economy as the monstrous debt pile unwinds?