Greece On The Slippery Slope, Who's Going Down With Them?

Fears over the solvency of Greece have reached new levels after Fitch downgraded the Mediterranean country's sovereign debt to BBB+, with a negative outlook.

Fellow ratings agency Standard & Poor's have also warned Greece that it may have its credit rating cut on worries over the government's ability to reign in its public finances.

This throws up a string of questions such as will Greece be looking to the rest of Europe to throw it a lifeline? And if so, how will Europe respond? And who else might get downgraded next?

Britain has already been warned that its AAA credit rating is not written in stone, but then again neither is that of the US.

Predicting likely future currency movements has never been easy, but surely has it ever been this hard?

Step forward our very own Knob in shining armour, Alistair Darling. I wouldn't trust him to fight his way out of a paper bag, but this afternoon he's going to tell us how he will halve our record budget deficit inside four years.

According to the Telegraph within that time frame almost 10p in every pound of tax paid by British families and companies will go straight towards interest payments on the national debt.

Next week Darling will unveil his plans to solve the Middle East problem, whilst immersed in a glass tank full of water, fifty feet up in the air in the middle of Hyde Park.