Asian stocks tumbled, driving Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average down 11 percent, and U.S. futures slumped on concern the deepening credit crisis will push the global economy into recession. Treasuries and the yen gained.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. plunged 8.5 percent after Moody's Investors Service said it may cut Morgan Stanley's credit rating. Neptune Orient Lines Ltd., Southeast Asia's largest container-shipping company, declined 12 percent on concern the region's exports will slow. BHP Billiton Ltd., the world's biggest mining company, lost 7 percent after crude oil fell to the lowest level in a year. Indonesia's stock exchange delayed the resumption of trading, extending a two-day halt.

`It's pure panic,'' said Ivan Tham, Singapore-based head of funds management at Kuwait Finance House, which has about $24 billion in assets. ``You're seeing companies start to fail because they can't refinance. Good companies are being sold down aggressively with the bad.''

The inability of corporations to refinance and rollover debt is THE trigger of the financial meltdown oozing into the Real Economy.

If this isn't solved PDQ were looking at a global economic meltdown.

Sidenote, my 97 year old father-in-law is hysterical.  "This is how I remembering it happening back in '29," he keeps telling me.


She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre