Also...
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Originally Posted by milo
surely something like Enron or WorldCom were as detrimental to the economy as say an insolvent bank
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Not really.
"The market" in terms of equities is probably less than a million people (in decision making terms). In terms of major volumes, I don't know, maybe it's 50k fund manages globally plus 100k other random brokers plus 50k investors playing with sums of more than £10m privately. So when they say "the market kept it's head" they're talking about smallish numbers of people.
However, if the general public lost confidence in the banking system (e.g. Barclays went under) and everyone started withdrawing their savings the economy would be ****ed very very quickly. Fortunately no-one has savings in the UK/US anymore and you don't really have a choice about getting paid in cash, but the general principle applies.