How should you cover a run on one of Britain’s biggest banks?

As for the Mail‘s front page splash this morning (“Crunch Time At The Halifax”), here’s a representative comment:

1 – Mail publishes scare-mongering headline about Halifax.

2 – Everyone closes accounts; shares freefall; cost of lending sky-rockets

3 – Darling pumps millions into Halfiax to save everyone’s mortgages

4 – more hysteria at Mail at how Darling is wasting taxpayers cash

I fucking hate this newspaper.

True, the BBC did report the existence of queues of depositors trying to get their cash out of the Halifax this afternoon. But the comment is also harsh in one respect: what was the Mail (and everyone else) meant to do? Ignore the bank’s plight? I don’t think so.