-Financial markets around the world went into a tailspin in the last few weeks after economic shakiness in the U.S. related to bank failure and the credit market meltdown.
-Japan’s government has said the Japanese economy has weakened and the government will implement a stimulus package to stave off recession, Bloomberg reported on Oct. 20. Japan, which has the second largest economy in the world, has seen Japanese stock prices fall about 20 percent in the last month.
-Argentina announced it would nationalize all of the private pension plans to protect them from global economic volatility, prompting the Argentine stock market to fall 13 percent. Opponents of Argentine president Cristina Kirchner called the move a scramble for cash so the government can pay off its international debt, according to the New York Times.
-The European Union has approved Germany’s nine billion dollar bailout of troubled German bank IKB Deutsche Industriebank. The German government is considering more economic aid to help economy, according to several news sources. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said in parliament last month that “the financial crisis is above-all an American problem,” days before the German government bailed out the German real estate company, Hyp Real Estate, for 35 billion dollars.
