Lehman goes bust, the end of the city?

Last Modified: 15 Sep 2008
By: Channel 4 News

Inside the morning meeting...

It's a very busy news day, with very strong stories around.

Top on everyone's agenda is the fallout surrounding Lehman Brothers, the world's fourth biggest investment bank, going bust overnight. No-one is sure how the States will react when they wake up but the knock-on effect will be huge.

Sarah Smith will be taking the political angle from Washington and Faisal Islam will cover it from here.

"It's the collapse of the shadow banking sector"
"It's clearly appalling. Could it be a global market meltdown?"
"Fundamentally, it's a problem with the investment banking system. I mean, you wouldn't invent it now."
"There's a lot of worry in the City about jobs"
"But how is going to impact upon people? There isn't an obvious A to B road here."
"I think this requires us going an extra level today."

The other big news stories of the day is Zimbabwe and the signing of the long anticipated power-sharing deal between Zanu-PF and the MDC.

The suspicions are however that it will be a messy affair and at the end of the day there won't be a clear feeling around Zimbabwe's new sense of direction and policy.

There's already signs of squabbling about some of the roles in the new cabinet and there's a temptation to spend too much time focusing on who gets what.

But instead we're hoping to take a longer look at what this means for the country and give a sense of how decimated it is. What needs to be done to put Zimbabwe back on its feet?

"Will the international community now puts its money where its mouth is and giving funding to Zimbabwe?

"I've got Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cate Blanchett at half past twelve today"

On the Labour leadership front it seems to be an in-between day.

At the moment there seem to be no new forthcoming revelations today but as one person says:

"This story's out of control. Nobody knows this morning what they're going to be doing this afternoon."

Over to the Liberal Democrats conference and they're busying throwing out as many eye catching headlines out as they can to capitalise on Labour's woes.

The other big talking point of the day is the launch of the pilot "Sarah's Law" in where concerned people can check to see if the targets of their concern are listed on the Sex Offenders Register.

Although it's not as simple as that - first you can only request information be made on someone who's going to spend unsupervised time with your child. Second, you have to keep all information confidential even if you discern something. Can it really work?

"What this is really about is boyfriends. Sex offenders are apparently targeting single mum's on dating websites, posing as the perfect partner so they can get to the kids. This is a measure that's trying to contain that."

"If you're having to run checks on your partner, it's the end of the relationship anyway."

"Perhaps it's driven by the fact that potentially the government might know your partner is a sex offender, but hasn't told you - could you legally take umbrage with that?"

Finally on a lighter note Stephanie West has got the afternoon meeting we're all jealous of:

"I've got Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cate Blanchett at half past twelve today."

Stephanie's interviews with both, around the new play that Blanchett has got Hoffman to direct, will be the pearl in the oyster tonight.