How bad is this crisis? Bad enough for central banks around the world to pump $180 billion into global financial markets, to jump start a system that seems to have broken down completely. Of course, that doesn't solve the main problem here. Banks don't trust each other and won't lend to one another. So this cash injection is just one step. What's needed is for the central banks to start leaning on the banks to start lending to each other again. Maybe that's why it continues to be a slaughter out there in the market with stocks tumbling. Anyone who though the $85 billion bailout, sorry nationalisation, of AIG would restore confidence would have had a nasty shock.

But amidst all this, it's very easy to forget about the impact this will have on the lives of the people who have worked at these institutions. Like for example the Lehman banker who told Sky News about the complete sense of helplessness. "Monday morning and all was confirmed.We were told that the firm was in administration, that we were no longer to transact any new business and that we were unlikely to receive any severance payment. Even worse, we were told we might not even be paid for this month's work and that outstanding expenses were now our responsibility. Emotions were understandably running high throughout the day. There was a sense of panic as people realised that it was all over - and so very quickly. Shock was certainly in evidence but also tremendous anger at the way things had been handled - Dick Fuld is not a popular man at the moment. Desks were cleared, people who hardly looked at each other normally were shaking hands, patting each other on the back, hugging. It was absolutely surreal and still there is uncertainty about what is going to happen."

Or this one from blogger Wendy. "I am bereft. I am just so sad. I realize this may sound a bit odd, but the first real job I ever had in New York (you know, the old 9 to 5 routine) was Lehman Brothers, where I worked for many happy years with a wonderful, wonderful boss who was also a friend. I am just terribly sorry about this whole thing."

Blogger Aldon Hynes says Lehman's fate was a long time coming, and not entirely unexpected. "When I worked at Lehman, I worked with mortgaged backed securities, those currently much maligned financial instruments that seem to be at the center of so much of the financial turmoil these days. We calculated the probability of home owners prepaying their mortgages and sliced and diced the cash flows from pools of mortgages to sell off the different pieces at a profit. Even back then, I wondered if this financial engineering was really making lives better for people other than those getting rich at Lehman and it's related firms. Friends reassured me that by increasing liquidity in the mortgage market, by creating securities that tailor the risk to people most interested in it, we were making mortgages easier to obtain for more people. We were reducing the price of mortgages."

Sad and brutal. But that's always been the market.