I feel a particular empathy, rather than a delighted sense of schadenfreude, because I am surrounded by people in similar situations, struggling to cope with the loss of security that a regular salary and a guaranteed job brings. I was talking to a colleague about all this the other day and his comment was that, in the Great Depression, workers could be seen throwing themselves out of the office window when news of their company’s demise reached the workforce.

Does the fact that no bodies (so far) have been seen splattered on the pavements of Canary Wharf and the Square Mile mean that the doomsayers are wrong, and this is not the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? No, it just means that the safety net that is credit has become so taken for granted that when we lose our jobs, we just borrow more money, either by actually taking out a loan, or by switching from the debit to the credit card (which amounts to the same thing). It doesn’t mean we don’t worry about money, but it does mean that by the time we get to that suicidal stage where we can’t afford a loaf of bread and the children are dressed in rags, we have reached minus £50,000 or minus £100,000 rather than simply zero.

I can’t work out which is worse: a land of zero credit where no job = starvation, or a land of infinite credit, where no job = more borrowing = people sleepwalking into a nightmare land of spiralling inflation and unemployment, infrastructure collapse (thanks, Radiohead) and an agonising slide back into the past. A quick death versus a slow death, in other words.

But there’s no real choice, of course. It is our nature to delay disaster in any way we can. So while I wait for the lights to go out, I fancy a double latte, and my credit card says yes.