I am really very cross about this 'sub-prime' fiasco.

It works like this: -

The sub-prime 'market' is that proportion of a population who are either too poor or who have such a low credit-rating that they cannot ordinarily obtain a loan - the traditional hunting territory of the loan shark.

The banks notice that there are profits to be made from these people. They therefore agree to supply them with mortgages - at an inflated rate of interest.

They justify the utterly immoral by being patronising. They say:

"We are enabling these people to buy their own homes."

All the time the economy is growing healthily, these banks make enormous profits from their new 'market'. The individual investment and fund managers take home million-dollar bonuses each Christmas.

Then, of course, the inevitable happens. The economy takes a downturn, house prices stop rising (reducing the banks' ability to recover the capital they advanced) and foreclosures rocket. Suddenly, enormous profit turns to enormous loss.

And who pays for it all? Not the investment bankers and fund managers. They all retired last year to their organic farms in Dorset.

Not those innocent people who invested their money in the institutions involved. They got their money back.

No, the Bank of England steps in and mops up the mess by paying the equivalent of £750 for every tax payer in the country.

In other words, we all pay for it.

Now, would the banks have been able to make such ridiculously large profits and, ultimately, such an economy-threatening mess, if they had been honest with their investors from the start. If, for instance, they had said:

"We have identified a new 'market'. It's risky, it's exploitative, we are completely over-exposed, but it is very profitable. Invest your money with us."

Irresponsible, immoral, greedy bastards.

Some of them have knighthoods.

That was nothing about Ann - but God, it sounded like her!