Finance and Economic

Asian and European leaders closed ranks on Saturday to try to bolster the confidence of shell-shocked investors fearful that the year-long global credit crunch is mutating into a worldwide recession.

Poor economic data around the world and another international barrage of corporate profit warnings and job cuts triggered a brutal sell-off in stocks from Tokyo to New York.

“The danger of a collapse (on financial markets) is far from over. Any all-clear would be wrong,” German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said in an interview released on Saturday.

“We are still in a dangerous situation. I am not going to mislead anyone and say: we have got everything under control,” he told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

The worries of political leaders were mirrored in the markets how to get a free credit report.

Seventy-nine years to the day after the 1929 crash that ushered in the Great Depression, currencies experienced extreme volatility, while oil and other commodities tumbled on fears of plummeting demand that would accompany a slowdown.

Many analysts declared that Europe was in recession after private-sector activity in the euro zone’s economy contracted at the fastest pace in at least a decade and Britain’s economy shrank 0.5 percent in the third quarter, much more than expected.

“The euro area has entered a deep recessionary spiral,” said Aurelio Maccario, chief euro zone economist at Italian bank UniCredit. 

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