Now what for the credit market?

This summer, it seemed like the bad news rippling out from the subprime mortgage crisis would never end. From the initial downgrades of subprime assets in early July, to the admissions from major banks that they were holding hundreds of millions of dollars of these toxic investments, to the unprecedented injection of liquidity from the world's central banks in August, the shock waves emanating from the epicentre of the subprime quake seemed unending.

And fears that the crisis would extend outside