I've been trying to think of a movie that best illustrates the current Major Economic Spasm (MES) gripping the more affluent parts of the world, but the problem I have had over the past few weeks is that the plot keeps evolving. But finally I have decided.

Firstly, I was going for the obvious and superficial, and chose "Wall Street". But it soon became clear that a better pick would be "Enron - The Smartest Guys In The Room".

As the banks started to tumble, my thoughts turned to "The Grapes Of Wrath", with its image of dust bowls and the Great (Previous) Depression. But then, the penny - or several trillion of them - dropped. There's one glaringly obvious choice.

It's "Godzilla". Mankind meddles with forces of nature more powerful than it can understand, and out of the ensuing toxic mess arises a mutant - or should that be derivative - creature threatens to wreak havoc on civilisation.

The reasons for the current MES (I can't call it a Global Financial Crisis because it is not totally global, it is financial only in its theatrical setting, and it should never have been a crisis) are complex, but there is one moral to this tale that is apparent to me, over and above the obvious rhyming-slang mantra of "Gordon Gekko was a Merchant Banker".

In attempting to create ever more sophisticated methods of creating wealth and guarding against loss, the Merchant Bankers of the world have created financial instruments that could almost be described as Genetically Modified Investments. And with no regulation by the central banks, and little or no comprehension by governments, these creatures (including, for example, Credit Default Swaps) have turned into outsize monsters that we are having enormous difficulty in beating.

To get an idea just how easy the CDS is to understand, check out the Probability Model on the Wikipedia page on Credit Default Swaps.

Indeed, we seem not to know yet just how big the problem is. The trillions of dollars' worth of potential liabilities seem to be growing by the day. How long will it be before the Q word starts getting a mention?

Quadrillion.