Now here’s a big shock. It turns out that British taxpayers could end up shelling out even more for Northern Rock than we were all told was on the cards.

A seemingly innocuous news story in the Financial Times could spell disaster for some European banks, says David Stevenson in Money Week. The ECB is looking to clamp down on struggling European banks that have become dependent on the cheap finance made available by Brussels. David says the alarm bells will be ringing loudest in Spain, where the banking sector is falling foul of a property market slump.

The Misery Index is set to make a comeback in Britain. It’s a fair bet that only those of you who remember the 1990s recession will have much idea of what I’m talking about, because that was the last time anyone spent any time discussing it. So what is it?

Investors around the world have been waiting and praying for months for a clear sign that the money markets are finally starting to defrost –so far, to no avail. But within the last month, there’s been a big rally in US banking stocks. That’s got investors excited.

An important date in the City’s social calendar went almost unmarked this week. Tuesday, the Twelfth of August, marked the official start of the grouse shooting season. It’s easy to see why amid the war in Georgia, and fear of recession in Europe, people might have had other things on their minds.

There’s been plenty of gloomy news on the UK economy in the past month, from grim data on house prices (down 8.8% in the past year, says Halifax) to miserable surveys in manufacturing and the service sector. But how is all this grim data affecting real companies?

The British bank reporting season is now in full flow. It’s the time of year for all those lenders, who’ve been happily turning down all your pleas for that extra loan or higher overdraft, to admit to all the cash they have managed to mislay over the last six months.

The financial markets have had plenty of wake-up calls in the past year or so. Yet markets adapt rapidly. We’re growing to accept things as normal which once would have seemed unthinkable.

Today marks a big day for the global credit crisis. It’s exactly one year old.