The biggest event in a very momentous week was not the roller-coaster ride in stock prices or another big drop in employment. At one point on Monday afternoon, stocks fell in the New York market by 400 points, in just six minutes. This is one of the major underlying problems with mark-to-market values. The value of U.S. business did not change by about 3 percent in just a few minutes. Mistakes in valuation and risk assessment lie at the heart of the continued turmoil in financial markets.

In August 2008 the majority of average MFI interest rates on new deposits and new loans were either basically unchanged or higher than in the previous month.

The way the world tries to solve its economic problems needs to be rethought amid today’s global crisis, including turning the Group of Seven into a Steering Group that empowers rising economic states, said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick.

President Bush signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, or EESA, into law within two hours of its final passage in the House of Representatives on October 3, 2008, and declared that the legislation was "essential to helping America's economy weather this financial crisis."

The Abraham Energy Report issued a special report to subscribers providing analysis on falling oil prices which dropped below $88 a barrel on Monday.

The EU must cooperate with the Irish government to address people's concerns and find a suitable way forward for institutional reform. So said MEPs in a lively Constitutional Affairs Committee debate with Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin on Monday, on the reasons for Ireland's referendum rejection of the draft Lisbon reform treaty.

Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes told MEPs on Monday that an EU-wide response to the banking crisis would be preferable to unilateral action. Competition rules were part of the solution rather than an obstacle to it, she argued.

As we have seen, the issues this week for investors will be the Reserve Bank, interest rates, employment in Australia, shares, banks generally, credit freeze, earnings in the US, interest rates in Britain and Japan and confidence generally.

Labour Force figures in Australia are out Thursday and its likely there will be an end to the growth in the labour market.

Nowhere to run, nowhere hide, or so it seems in recent weeks. Last week was no exception, and the havoc continued across the globe yesterday and continued into the trading in northern hemisphere markets.

Markets tumbled around the world, the euro fell sharply against the yen and the US dollar;oil dropped below $US90 a barrel and the Australian dollar plunged by over 5% in a matter of hours.

In 2007, the total GDP in the 27 states of the European Union grew to nearly USD 17 trillion. It is now the world's largest economy and its largest single economic area. The European Attractiveness Scoreboard (EAS) features data showing how Europe positions itself as an investment location in comparison to other major locations such as the United States, Japan, China, and India.

The number of households in the US with $500,000 in net worth, not including primary residences, decreased by 5% to an estimated 15.6 million in 2008, according to TNS. That is the first time in six years that the number of affluent households has fallen.

Volatile market conditions contributed to very strong trading across the equity order books of the London Stock Exchange Group during September. £302.8 billion (€383.1 billion) worth of equity trading was carried out during the month, an increase of 24 per cent on September 2007, while the total number of trades increased 62 per cent to 27.1 million.

UEAPME, the European craft and SME employers’ organisation, welcomed the outcomes of the “mini-summit” on the current economic and financial crisis between the EU members of the G8, the European Commission and the Eurogroup that took place in Paris on Saturday.