The financial landscape has permanently changed after the historic events of September 2008, and markets are seized up by a crisis of investor confidence. Major central banks have been struggling to quell market fears, inject liquidity, cut rates and kick-start growth in the face of the steady stream of negative economic data and an increasingly recessionary outlook for the global economy (Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has officially fallen into recession after its GDP shrank for the second consecutive quarter in 3Q2008).