The demise of Lehman Brothers a year ago sparked a collapse in financial market confidence and set of a series of reactions that have spread hardship into the four corners of the globe.

Reuters News has charted the key events and their impact in "Times of Crisis" -- a major new multimedia production on Reuters.com. (See it here.)

We'd like to add the experiences of Reuters readers. So, if you or your family have been affected by the events of the past year then use the comments section below to share your story.

A day after Britain unveiled a multi-billion-pound fiscal stimulus package to spend its way out of recession, market analysts have been busy figuring out what it all means, in the context of a sharply slowing economy.

Nick Parsons, head of market strategy at nabCapital, has come to this conclusion:

“People need to spend less, not more, and though little Johnny’s Xbox is indeed 4 quid cheaper, his Dad’s house is worth £3.97 less every hour,”he wrote in his daily note.

“That’s every hour of every day, 24 hours a day and is not going to get in the slightest bit better as a result of yesterday’s budget announcement… Thanks to the VAT reduction, Easter eggs might be 10p cheaper next year but by then average house prices will be another £10,000 cheaper. Go figure.”

Every month, Merrill Lynch asks a few hundred fund managers around the world what they think of the state of things. Not surprisingly, this month’s survey is probably the gloomiest yet. Everyone, says Gary Baker, the strategist charged with explaining the poll, is a macro bear suffering from hyper risk-aversion.

Of particular note for readers of Macroscope this time is the finding that 84 percent of fund managers, more than four in five, say it is likely that the global economy will experience recession over the next 12 months. It is actually possible that the figure is greater than that, given the question’s definition of recession as two quarters of negative real GDP growth. That definition is fine for countries, but for the global economy it is a bit nebulous.

At least one should hope so. According to the International Monetary Fund, global GDP should end up having grown 3.9 percent at the end of this year and drop to 3.0 percent in 2009. Blistering growth in places like China may cool, but is still likely to keep the world economy in growth. So many fund managers may have been considering a less specific definition of global recession. The IMF informally used to think of it as below 3 percent growth, for example, but is not so keen on this now.

Whatever the definition, Merrill’s fund managers are pretty clear about one thing - the times have changed. Each month, their thoughts on where we are in the economic cycle are plotted on a kind of clock, where 12 is mid-cycle and 6 is recession. Until January this year, they spent 3-1/2 years between 1 o’clock and 2 o’clock — essentially saying the economy was just past mid-cycle. The clock has ticked rapidly since January and is now at half past five.

All this begs a number of questions. 1) Are the fund managers right about recession, or are they just overreacting to massive losses on stocks markets? 2) Can Chinese growth continue to shore up the world’s? 3) If we are at 5:30, how long before the clock ticks to 6:35 and enters a new upward economic cycle?

It’s nickel and dime time for banks as they come under pressure to cut costs in order to survive the worst financial crisis in 80 years.

According to banking sources, a U.S. bank in Canary Wharf has banned colour printing and has asked employees in the back office to chip in 25 pounds each for the office Christmas party.

A bank in Mayfair has told its employees to only hail cabs on the street instead of booking on the phone. Another bank in the City has pushed back the time employees can take taxis home to 9.30pm from 8.30pm previously.

A senior banker from the collapsed bank Lehman Brothers, soon to be transferred to Japanese bank Nomura, ordered a glass of tap water at a meeting in a restaurant.

Know any more belt-tightening measures being implemented? Contributions welcome.

You know things are bad on financial markets when an investment research note starts talking about Dante’s visit to the nine circles of Hell with tormented lustful souls and gluttons living in filthy slush.

In the case of State Street Global Markets’ latest report, however, there is a more direct link than simple hyperbole about the way investors are feeling. The firm recently had a chat with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers who defined what he saw as the five vicious circles of the current financial crisis.

It goes like this:

Circle One: House prices fall in value, putting some people into negative equity and leading some to default on mortgages. Foreclosures further erode asset values.

Circle Two: Falling asset prices erode bank capital, making banks more hesitant to lend, leading to further asset price falls and lower capital levels.

Circle Three: A slowing real economy reduces financial asset prices, leading to less lending and less investment. This causes the economy to slow further.

Circle Four: A slowing economy means less demand for goods and services, leading to lower employment and even less demand.

Circle Five:  Confidence in the financial system breaks down. State Street says that investment flows and moves on global stock markets clearly suggest this is where the financial world is at the moment.

It is worth remembering, perhaps, as investors stare into the inferno, that Dante did come back from his visit to Hell’s circles. But then again, he did not go straight to Heaven. There were seven terraces of Purgatory to manoeuvre through first.

Nobody knows quite what the landscape for financial services will be after the mayhem of the last three weeks. There is much talk of the investment banking model being dead in the water and swingeing regulation aimed at firmly bolting the door of a horseless stable, but few are ready to hazard at the details.

One aspect on which we have seen almost universal agreement, however, is that investors have cottoned onto the immense risk of bankrolling investments they don’t quite understand. The trend for increasing pension fund investments in alternative strategies starts to look like a busted flush, and you have to question whether demand for the UK’s planned retail funds of hedge funds will sustain the new industry.

Schroders CIO Alan Brown told us this week: “People will be taking a long hard look at complex financial products.”

“If you see a creative investment banker head towards you, you are likely to develop short arms and deep pockets.”

It’s clearly an issue which encourages investors towards the poetic; Colin Melvin, CEO at the equity ownership service at Hermes told a sustainable investment briefing on Wednesday: “What we’ve seen perhaps is a multiplicity or complexity of investment products and services which has grown up in order to maintain unusual profitability of the industry. As you shine a light on it, it will simper off into the dark again.”

And Robert Talbut, CIO of Royal London Asset Management lends further weight to the argument.

He told us: “We see a return to simplicity in products - complexity is out. The absolute return-type product is significantly under threat - clients will be wary of the opacity and prime broking is getting much harder to come by.”

Some industry players talk about a return to favour for old-fashioned, long-only balanced funds, with some interest for high-grade investment bonds, or perhaps global equities. The trouble at the moment is that many investors see few viable bolt holes for their cash. Just ask Andrew Chapman, pensions manager at the 2 billion pound John Lewis pension scheme.

“There is nowhere to hide,” he said. “This is a whole new paradigm and there are too many uncertainties out there - you make one move and you might be worse off than what you are doing now.”

 – Joel Dimmock, Claire Milhench, Raji Menon

After the collapse of Northern Rock, AIG and XL group – which sponsored Newcastle United, Manchester United and West Ham respectively — the curse of English football is getting stronger.

Today Iceland’s Landsbanki went into receivership. Its chairman Björgólfur Gudmundsson owns West Ham football club.

In November 2006, Gudmundsson, Iceland’s second richest man, led an 85 million pound buyout of the east London club in November 2006, investing another 30.5 million pounds in December 2007.

Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra sold his Manchester City football club to an Abu Dhabi-based company having gone into exile in London in August on corruption charges.

Still, Thaksin did make a fat profit.

The global financial crisis is no laughing matter for many people, but it has nonetheless resurrected some dreadful puns that were popular back during the Japanese banking fiasco in the 1990s. Doing the rounds by e-mail are the following:

Sumo Bank has gone belly up; Bonsai Bank is cutting its branches; Karaoke Bank is for sale and will go for a song; Samurai Bank is soldiering on; Ninja Bank is in the black; staff at Karate Bank have got the chop; and there is something fishy up at Sushi Bank.

The recent crisis has been less fruitful. Some people started cruelly referring to Northern Rock as Northern Wreck when the British lender was nationalised and analysts have lately been toying with TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Plan. Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch both suggested that TARP could be a TRAP while Goldman Sachs suggested it had been TARPedoed by Congress.

Surely this crisis is big enough to get better than that? Your contributions welcome.

In these troubled times, go back to basics.

Theo Zemek, AXA Investment Managers‘ global head of fixed income, says investors should adopt “Quaker investment policies” – sober and safe investment strategies that can be explained to their grandmothers.

“Anyone who utters the word ‘hedge’, after all these CDS (failures), ought to be taken out and be shot,” the 25-year markets veteran told a media briefing.

“This is the scariest market I’ve ever seen in 25 years. The world of complex instruments, credit guarantees… That world is very much an ancient history… It’s a darn tough market. Who is left standing among our counterparties?”

Zemek said she overheard commuters on the train discussing the new preference for simplicity in investment strategy and citing Goldman Sach’s chief global economist Jim O’Neill as saying: “Anyone who thinks they understand what’s going on is guaranteed to be an idiot.”

AXA IM’s parent company AXA said last week that it has a non-material equity interest and credit exposure in Lehman Brothers (collapsed) and AIG (bailed out).

During a briefing in the London office of Societe Generale this week, Alain Bokobza, head of European Equity and Cross Asset strategy, handed out a booklet containing series of charts and graphs to explain the bank’s latest multi asset portfolio for the fourth quarter.

As he explained the outlook for the UK economy, a chart on UK growth was discreetly missing from the booklet.

“There’s no chart. It’s too gloomy to print it,” Bokobza told the participants.

Societe Generale sees inflation shooting below the Bank of England’s target of 2 percent over the next two years and has a bullish call on UK stocks as it predicts benchmark interest rates to fall to 3.5 percent in a year’s time from the current 5.0 percent.