From Black Swans to dead-cat bounces... 10 terms to help you get to grips with the global financial meltdown

1 Sub-prime Introduced Europeans to the frightening notion that their beloved pensions could be wiped out in a heartbeat by some Clarksville hick defaulting on a mortgage for a small barn. That's globalisation for you. Attempts to introduce the term into the wider lexicon have largely failed: "That burger was a bit sub-prime"... for example.

2 Credit crunch If you can explain this in fewer than 30 words you are either barking mad or Robert Peston. But here goes: the credit crunch is a term used to describe a reduction in the availability of loan capital—a squeeze on lending—caused by a perceived increase in the risk of a default on that loan.

3 Dead-cat bounce City jargon for a sudden improvement in
the performance of the stockmarket, immediately followed by further losses. If you throw a cat off the top floor of a building it may well bounce, but that doesn't mean it will ever eat breakfast again.

4 Black Swan A seismic, pivotal event. Black Swans change our perception of things forever—September 11, or the arrival of the internet, for example—and are difficult to predict. For many, the credit crunch was a Black Swan, but not if you're Vince Cable.

5 Credit Default Swap A Byzantine system that allows anyone, even disinterested speculators, to take out insurance on the default
of a loan. A credit crunch would appear as good a time as any to buy one, but bear in mind that in an unregulated industry the insurer could easily default on the credit instrument it is insuring: a default default, if you will. Keep up at the back.

6 Capitalism An old-fashioned societal structure, based on the outmoded assumption that striving to possess greater quantities of stuff is inherently a good thing.

7 Quantitative analyst A highly paid maths or physics graduate hired by banks to write the software responsible for trading large volumes of derivatives. That's right: all those risky trades were automated. It was the machines wot dunnit!

8 Short-selling Selling borrowed stock you know to be junk on the assumption that it will fall in value, allowing you to buy it back at a profit. Considered morally repugnant by banking chiefs who have run out of scapegoats.

9 Deleveraging A term used by beleaguered finance directors to obfuscate the fact that the business is mortgaged to the hilt and living on borrowed time.

10 Derivative Spread Utility A completely fictional financial product that we just made up on the spot. See how easy it is?