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Well it has been one hell of a busy news week, starting on Monday with Investment Adviser's report that confidence in money market funds had dropped.

The FTSE 100 index also had a bad start to the week - something that would continue throughout - slumping 7.8 per cent on Monday, to close without a single blue chip stock ending in positive territory.

Tuesday dawned with the revelation that UK savers with Icelandic online savings bank Icesave had been hit by its parent bank Landsbanki's nationalisation, as reported by Money Management.

However, this was quickly overshadowed on Wednesday by the government's announcement of its £50bn bank rescue package, as reported by FTAdviser.

HSBC quickly sought to distance itself from the part-nationalisation scheme, announcing it had no plans to utilise the recapitalisation scheme

The Bank of England also got in on the action on Wednesday, joining with several other international central banks, to cut interest rates by 0.50 basis points to 4.5 per cent, as reported by Mortgage Adviser.

But Iceland's troubles were never far from the headlines - or readers' thoughts - with the Treasury also reassuring Icesave's depositors on Wednesday that they would not lose any money.

At the same time, ING Direct stepped in to take on all of Heritable's (Icelandic bank Landsbanki's other UK-based banking subsidiary) retail deposit business.

Thursday brought news of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's promise to punish any irresponsible risk taking by UK banks, in a bid to correct any underlying problems in the banking system.

FTAdviser also reported that Iceland's government had taken over control of Kaupthing Bank, the country's biggest bank, making it the third Icelandic bank to fall into the hands of the country's authorities.

The week was rounded off on Friday with the upsetting news, that Origen Financial Services, the Aegon UK-owned IFA, is to make up to 100 redundancies as a result of a cost cutting programme.

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FTAdviser reporter Sharon Flaherty pre-empted the government's bank rescue packaging on Tuesday, calling for banks to be part-nationalised to save the UK economy.

Mortgage Adviser editor Emma Ann Hughes questioned whether, given the state of the banking sector, we should invest in manufacturing mattresses?

Financial Adviser features editor Melanie Tringham highlighted that a number of councils stand to lose savings they had deposited with Icelandic banks.

Meanwhile, FTAdviser editor Gemma Westacott closed out the week with the news that the banks had won round one of the High Court bank overdraft charges case.