On the face of it, nothing has changed. If tourists in Manhattan kept away from newsstands and the gargantuan television screens in Times Square, they wouldn't realise they were standing in the eye of a storm. They would never guess that in the glass-fronted, honeycomb offices above their heads the bankers and hedge fund managers who monopolise New York are daily having the worst “bad day at the office” since the crash of 1929.

Delivery boys still rattle metal tea trolleys across sidewalks, ferrying trays of muffins for breakfast meetings. Latino men still shuffle between apartment buildings carrying, like human mules, 50-odd pressed shirts hanging from a yoke across their shoulders. Office workers still wait in line for their morning bagel at pavement food carts, and it is still impossible to get a yellow cab between 4pm and 7pm on a weekday.

It didn't feel as if there was a crisis at all, until, with all the talk of doom and gloom, I decided to open a new savings account on Thursday afternoon.

Even though I had timed the chore to coincide with the late afternoon lull at my local branch of JP Morgan Chase, a queue of 20 or so people was already waiting in line. Not in front of the teller windows, to withdraw cash or make a deposit, but in front of the customer service desk, where older clients order cheque books, tourists ask for directions to Macy's department store and new customers open accounts.

Most of those ahead of me, I was to learn later from Starr, my “licensed personal banker”, were lining up for the same reason as me. Unlike me, however, they had already withdrawn savings from smaller banks in places from where they commuted, from the likes of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Staten Island. They had taken out money from so-called thrifts (a bit like a building society), credit unions and the type of hometown savings banks whose branches only operate within one state, and who say they treat customers like family.

In the past year, 15 of these banks have quietly gone bust. In the last few days Washington Mutual, a bank with $327 billion of assets, went into receivership, and as New Yorkers headed home for the weekend on Friday night, another bank, Wachovia, with savings deposits of $440 billion, was on the hunt for a rescue buyer. The office and shop workers standing in front of me, scared of another collapse, were moving their cash to a bank perceived to be a safe haven, the bank that is doing most of the bailing out on Wall Street.

Ordinary New Yorkers in the last few weeks have become fluent in finance. A woman at my local Chinese supermarket, speaking into her phone, referred to Lehman Brothers, the bust bank, and its gaunt-looking chief executive Dick Fuld with all the familiarity as if she were bitching about an idle colleague. And Lyn, the uniformed, fifty-something concierge of my apartment block, has changed tack from our normal topic of conversation about Brad and Angelina or my grocery delivery. She told me, after my visit to the bank, that “I got all my savings in money market funds now. I've switched, I'm not taking any risks.”

Handsome prophet

When the US Treasury Secretary said last week that he wouldn't bet against the American people, against their entrepreneurship, and their ability to bounce back from a slump, he need have looked no farther than a mortuary in Harlem for evidence.

Just off Malcolm X Boulevard - a wide avenue packed with funeral homes and Baptist churches - sits Isaiah Owens Enterprises. The Reverend Owens (also known as “Boogie” or, more humbly, “The Prophet”) prides himself on making his corpses the best made-up cadavers this side of the Hudson. His company slogan, “Where beauty softens the grief”, is written across the canopy above the front door.

Known for being a whiz at disguising bullet wounds (called “restorative” work among those in the trade), he describes being an embalmer and all-round funeral king as his “true calling” in life. Boogie's website tells us that he wants to create beautiful, lasting images of the deceased to treasure in the days ahead.

Demonstrating the kind of corporate synergy of which a management consultant would be proud, a nail and hair salon sits next door.

Named and shamed

Americans do repossession differently from us. Apart from a visit from a bailiff, Brits can keep their financial distress firmly behind closed doors. Aside from a for-sale sign in the front garden and more official-looking post than your neighbour, no one knows you might be quietly going bust. Not so in the US. Here, banks nail bright yellow notices on the front door of a repossessed home, detailing the time and place of the auction. In some counties, the sheriff loops heavy chains round the locks. The shame is there for all to see.

Suzy Jagger is US business correspondent

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