A tongue-in-cheek attempt to make sense of an uncertain year.
The Deutsche Börse and NYSE Euronext tie-up is blocked by European regulators in March or April. Both sides pick themselves up, dust themselves off and make offers for the London Stock Exchange leading to a summer-long bidding war.
The phrase "phantom liquidity" will become common industry parlance as the high-frequency trading debate heats up in the wake of a "flash crash" on a Nordic stock exchange in April. The event inspires 18 books and two Hollywood films.
Vladimir Putin wins the Russian presidential election in March. But a report by the UN questions the validity of the result, leading to a surge in opposition popularity in the country. The Arab Spring will spread to Saudi Arabia during Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in October. A crackdown by security forces begins to falter in November. Iran takes instability in one of the West's main allies in the Middle East as a cue to step up patrols in the Strait of Hormuz. Combined with forecasts that the US will suffer its coldest winter in decades, oil and gas prices go through the roof.
A private equity firm, which has been unable to deploy its dry powder on buyouts, uses the money to back over-the-counter derivatives. When oil prices peak, rumours that the firm is sitting on a large short position lead to increased collateral calls the firm can't meet because the cash has been rehypothecated away to nothing. All those who have issued warnings about the shadow banking system fall over themselves to tell us they told us so.
The Occupy movement is forced to abandon its encampment outside St Paul's Cathedral in London as poor sanitation and the hot summer weather lead to an outbreak of cholera.
One of the big Chinese state-owned banks buys the Royal Exchange on the doorstep of the Bank of England and promptly converts it into one of the biggest trading floors in the City staffed with legions of bilingual dealers of off-shore renminbi products.
France and Germany independently and unilaterally impose financial transaction taxes. Trading volumes in the UK soar.
Commentators writing about austerity economics and the European sovereign debt crisis repeatedly reference the 200th anniversary of the birth of Dickens in February and the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April. Headlines about "Hard Times", "Bleak Houses", "icebergs ahead" and "rearranging the deckchairs" litter the newsstands and internet.
Team GB win only two gold medals at the London Olympics. In-fighting about sports funding leads to the shock collapse of the coalition government but the Fixed-term Parliaments Act requires a minority Conservative government to limp on for the rest of the year. In the US, President Obama announces that he's had enough and won't be standing for re-election, prompting a scramble to appoint a Democratic candidate to take on Mitt Romney.
After half a dozen emergency summits, pitched battles on the streets of Athens, two changes of government in Hungary, 10-year Italian government bond yields spending the summer in double-figures and Nicolas Sarkozy narrowly losing the French presidency to socialist rival François Hollande campaigning on a promise to rework the eurozone deals hatched in 2011, the euro makes it through the year battered but in one piece.
