US recession fears sink global markets

from AP, via Yahoo!



US recession fears sink global markets
By CARL FREIRE, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 51 minutes ago



TOKYO - Asian and European stock markets plunged Monday following declines on Wall Street last week amid investor pessimism over the U.S. government's stimulus plan to prevent a recession.

India's benchmark stock index tumbled 7.4 percent, while Hong Kong's blue-chip Hang Seng index plummeted 5.5 percent to 23,818.86, its biggest percentage drop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Investors dumped shares because they were skeptical that an economic stimulus plan President Bush announced Friday would shore up the economy, which has been battered by housing and credit problems. The plan, which requires approval by Congress, calls for about $145 billion worth of tax relief to encourage consumer spending.

Concerns about the outlook for the U.S. economy, a major export market for Asian companies, has sent the region's markets sliding in 2008. Just last Wednesday, the Hang Seng index sank 5.4 percent.

"It's another horrible day," said Francis Lun, a general manager at Fulbright Securities in Hong Kong. "Today it's because of disappointment that the U.S. stimulus (package) is too little, too late and investors feel it won't help the economy recover."

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 index slid 3.9 percent to 13,325.94 points, its lowest close in more than 2 years. China's Shanghai Composite index plunged 5.1 percent.

The sell-off continued in Europe. Germany's DAX was down 4.2 percent in morning trading, France's CAC 40 slid 4.7 percent, while Britain's FTSE 100 dropped 3.6 percent.

"People are certainly nervous about a potential recession in the U.S. spilling over to the rest of the world," said David Cohen, Director of Asian Economic Forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore.

"Maybe there's still some wariness about politicians are able to come up with a compromise and act sufficiently quickly" on a stimulus package, Cohen said. "I think the impact would be marginal anyway." .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080121/ap_on_bi_ge/world_markets

Unless this can be contained, we will be Lucky if it is ONLY a recession

The excess has been building up for years, encouraged through the deregulation started by reagan and continued by EVERY administration to the present

No one has learned why the glass-steagall act was created after the depression, and when Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act which essentially over-rode the glass-steagall act, that was another signal we were headed into major problems

I would hope this once and for all settles the question why Social Security, even a small percentage MUST NOT be allowed to be put into the stock market. I know people will argue that in the long term the market always goes up, but there is no gurantee when you NEED that money that the market will be up.

Most of all, I don't trust wall street. They want that Social Security Money, and the temptation for unsavory firms to take advantage of this money has been shown that it will occur time and time again.

Deregulation brought us the S&L crisis, and increased energy costs, which provide much higher costs for everything we purchase. The big lie we were fed by the government that inflation was under control was because they always excluded food and energy.

We have been living on credit, and now we are going pay for it. The Iraq war has also contributed not only because tremendous amounts of money are being diverted, but also because it has directed impacted the price we pay for gas

affect everyone. Will tomorrow be a Black Tuesday?