We start this week with a criminal confession. Last week, I thought Friday was Thursday. (What I thought Thursday was is not entirely clear.)

I generally view not knowing what day of the week it is to be a state of grace, so I was entirely covered in grace when I got home late on Friday and discovered I'd missed the deadline for last week's column. Worse, it being Friday, the working week was shot. I had about 100 things planned to do on the Friday I thought I still had ahead of me.

Worse still, a cold realisation hit me after I'd called in my apologies to the more serious people at the Gazette, who always know exactly what day it is. I had spent the entire day scratching the wrong date off my Hamilton parking vouchers. Given that I moved around town a lot that day, I am nominally guilty of a city-wide crime spree, what we writers call an I-dunnit.

Now, just in case the men and women in blue come after me, my legal team will assert that on every occasion I paid the right fee at the right time and, in meeting the intent of the law, should therefore be exonerated of all charges.

And I will assert, here and now, that the Corporation of Hamilton makes it very difficult for those of us to whom one day is much like the next. How am I supposed to know what day it is? Whenever I'm in Hamilton, I'm all on edge from the stress. Give the dysfunctional a break, I say.

Until now I have deliberately refrained from making any comments on the election campaign. I'm not about to start now, being an unindicted criminal and all. But I will pass on to you some advice given to me back in 2003 by a wise man: vote early and vote often.

I have been wondering of late about the credit crunch. Another wise man asked me: "Where did it go, all that credit?" He argued that credit doesn't evaporate just because it's Tuesday, or Wednesday. His analysis is that some bankers have palmed a bunch of rotten bonds off to financial markets apparently chock full of dimwits, who are now reacting in the only fashion they know how.

Wherever all that credit has gone, can we please have it back? It is true that volatile stock markets create unease in the investing community, but being a member of that community means experiencing a sort of permanent unease. Things are always dire for investing types. If they're not actually dire today, they are almost always regarded as standing on the brink of being dire tomorrow.

It rather looks as if things are a bit dire today. The markets are all a-flutter. My e-mail is full of speculation that giant US banking names are about to fall prey to each other. The currency markets, and especially the comparative value of the US dollar, are all out of whack. Interest rates are low. Gold has gone through the roof.

Meanwhile, apart from some job losses in the banking sector, total write-downs in the financial markets will probably exceed the insured cost of the loss of the World Trade Centre. The world survived that, and I suspect we'll survive this.

I have a broker buddy who started his own investment management business to take advantage of times like this: he is building what he believes will prove to be solid portfolios for his clients on downswings, convinced that today's trouble will bring tomorrow's (or next year's) profits for his clients.

I find myself a little stunned by how this credit situation could have arisen. UBS, a Swiss bank, wrote $10 billion off its portfolio as a consequence. Other banks are dropping billions quicker than strippers shedding their G-strings. Oil-rich countries and places like Singapore are snapping up US assets at bargain basement prices.

Speaking of Switzerland, not long after 9/11 Swissair went out of business. Swissair was one of the finest airlines ever to fly the turbulent skies! It turned out that Swissair was a leasing company, with few assets and insufficient cash to last out a market downturn. Now banks are proving brittle. Could it be that we have over-estimated people's ability to manage these giant enterprises?

The Bermuda insurance and reinsurance companies seem to have dodged this bullet, with the possible exception of some of the bond insurers, whose situations are not yet clear.

Not buying junk assets that might turn out to be worthless, no matter how they may be rated, can't be that hard a decision. So either the companies that are experiencing difficulties did not understand what's in their portfolios, which would be a serious indictment, or they did understand and went ahead and bet the farm, which would be worse.

I understand that, like any other investors, companies need to spread their risks and invest their giant portfolios across a broad spectrum, but investment spread doesn't mean throwing caution to the wind.

Estimates suggest that as much as $200 billion may be lost before this is all done. Just how many mortgages were sold to people who couldn't afford them?

I remain firm that this will pass, but may have underestimated its effects. I tend always to assume that a company with a 100-year history and a bucketful of billions knows what it's doing, but what's going on gives one grounds for pause.

Only a little pause, though. Without faith in the economic system, you'd need to buy some Rottweilers and head for the underground caves. No need for that yet.