Markets crashing through wave after wave of selling, as they have been lately, is a frightening if exhilarating sight — much like watching a raging storm.

How enjoyable it is depends on whether you are in the middle of the tempest or watching it from the comfort of a roaring fire.

Either way, the true rottenness of the financial system is only now being made apparent by the extent of the international rescue operations launched last week. That is why share prices plummeted. Gordon Brown’s safety net will impoverish for a generation the remaining investors in the banking sector.

While the prime minister wants banks to lend again so that the economy can recover, it looks too little too late. The non-financial world is slowing down, making companies a worse loan bet than before.

An expert in corporate recovery told me: “We now realise that government intervention alone is not going to be enough. A market cleansing is required, and I don’t think that will be a bad thing. But it won’t happen overnight.”

No two bear — or bull, for that matter — markets are alike, but this one smells more like 1929 or 1974 than 1987, which felt terrible but was no more than a hiccup. The International Monetary Fund has joined the chorus warning that the financial crisis is likely to feature “severe and protracted economic downturns”.

If we are very lucky we might begin to see some signs of light a year from now. And a true upturn of significant proportions? The effects of the 1929 crash continued until they were absorbed by wartime rearmament. The 1974 collapse was not erased until the 1980s.

Do not be misled by the US billionaire Warren Buffett’s well-publicised investments in General Electric and Goldman Sachs. His name was so desirable that he was given cut-price, VIP tickets. The rest of us are not in that category.

So I go along with Caprice, interviewed on the back page in this week’s Fame & Fortune. She is selling property and I am getting out of any asset I am not prepared to hold on to for at least five years — even shares after their huge falls. The same goes for art and antiques.

If you need to sell in the next year I believe you will look back on today’s prices as a fairy tale. On the other hand, bargains will be thick on the ground if you are convinced of their value and can afford to wait a while. Don’t be in any rush to buy, though. We haven’t touched bottom yet.

Bank wishlist

WELCOME to the world of state-run banks. I outlined some of what we could expect from nationalisation last Sunday — in particular, that the new £50,000 guarantee has become irrelevant as long as you stay with big British banks.

However, they are going to have to yield plenty of autonomy in return for their cash injections, and this could be the lever bank customers have been praying for.

Brown has already said that banks are going to have to be nicer to small businesses and mortgage seekers, but why stop there?

If he has been properly briefed, he will know that there are enough customer grievances to cover the Thames from Canary Wharf to Downing Street. Now he can sort them out.

Firstly, penalty charges. Only last week Barclays was celebrating a High Court victory over charges, but thousands of customers are still in limbo because the Office of Fair Trading is wrestling with the banks on a wider front. Brown should tell them to back off.

He should also order them to end the disguised fees and charges on credit cards, mortgages and insurance policies. These were a legacy of rampant competition, which is no longer a problem.

And the fat bonuses bank directors won’t be receiving anymore? Spend the money on sending the minority of ill-mannered staff to charm school, starting with the call centre harridans.

While they are about it, the banks could reprogramme those irritating phone robots that tell us to press one for this, two for that, three for the other.

In fact, as they won’t have so much to do in future, let’s have bank directors on the phones. They might learn something . . .

Club together

HELP has never been more important than now, which is why I reckon members of the Association of Independent Financial Advisers are wrong to fret over the proposed network of free money guidance centres. Nearly half doubt that the benefits will outweigh the costs.

Plenty of advisers do give free help to sort out the financially muddled, but they will all be needed to make the guidance scheme work.

Meanwhile, why not form your own self-help group? Investment clubs are a proven way to learn about the stock market, and a money club on similar lines is a sociable way to exchange news and views about handling finances generally.

You don’t have to reveal more about your own income or wealth than you want to, but sharing problems will help you solve them — without paying a fee.

Times Recommends

• Snow brings out the inner Tory in all of us
• Hail, Britain’s Indiana Jones of the Amazon
• Hewitt and Hoon – two rabbits, one hat