Bear Stearns threw in the towel in the first quarter, followed by Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch in the third quarter, while Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have changed their status to commercial banks. The world’s two largest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were taken over by the US authorities in September. The insurance giant AIG is surviving now thanks to loans from the authorities. Financial institutions in countries such as the UK, Germany, Iceland, Belgium and Denmark have also shared the same fate. We can safely say that the year 2008 was anything but a «normal year».
