The Freedom Tower

It has happened this week - the daily toll on major financial institutions has left wall street reeling. Crisis, extraordinary, unimaginable, astonishing - are some of the more principal words being used by financial analysts, according to Skynews.com.

The sums of money involved are staggering. Millions is small change. Billions is the norm.

Trillions are increasingly coming up in discussions about the debts of major financial institutions and the cash injections needed to bails them out.

Even the government has been left reeling. It refused to come to the rescue of the investment bank Lehman Brothers on Monday after being criticised for pouring already hard-pressed tax payers’ dollars into Bear Stearns - another sick investment bank earlier this year.

Never again said the US Treasury said. The following day it back tracked and propped up the world’s biggest insurer AIG with 85 billion. It had little choice.

The collapse of AIG, which insurers many of the world’s commercial banks against bad debt, would have been devastating, said analysts.

It would have jeopardised world markets and the broader economy said the treasury, justifying the about-turn.

None of which has stopped the downhill slide of stock markets or the rumours that more corner stones of the US financial world are in trouble.

Where will it end?

None of the respected financial experts here are prepared to guess. The simply don’t know. That in itself increase the fear and uncertainty.