Dear Listener

Money Box has been on holiday – but the gremlins haven’t. A rogue newsletter from June may well have appeared in your in box recently. Ignore it.

You will also have had Lesley’s Lowdown about this week’s Inside Money. Don’t ignore that but put in the pending tray. I’ll explain why later.

I didn’t expect to be back just yet – Money Box really comes back in two weeks on September 1st. But we couldn’t ignore the extraordinary events on the world’s stock markets. Share prices plummeting, banks in trouble, and experts saying through clenched teeth – don’t panic it’s perfectly normal.

So this Saturday we are back for a one-off live programme to look at the turbulence on the financial markets – what has caused it, can anyone cure it, and what does this uncertainty means for our money?

Share prices in London are down where they were nine years ago. So should we put our savings in cash? Or is the current situation a wonderful opportunity to buy shares cheap?

Are our pensions safe? As share prices have plummeted pension funds are back in deficit with less money in their coffers than they need to meet their obligations.

What can we do to protect our finances from these powerful international forces?

And after two turbulent weeks is the crisis coming to an end? Or just beginning...

I’ll be discussing all that with a panel of experts live at midday on Saturday. Remember, if you miss it you can listen online at www.bbc.co.uk/moneybox.

And Inside Money? That will be on Monday at 3pm looking at long-term fixed rate mortgages.

Best wishes

Paul Lewis

PS Don’t forget the live preview of Money Box on Saturday on BBC1 Breakfast between 8.45 and 9.00.

e-mail Paul Lewis