Financial mayhem: global markets conclude the year's darkest week

A rocky week for exchange markets all over the world finally came to an end today. The US handling of its unprecedented debt crisis, the outlook of the worse recession since the 1930’s as President Barack Obama himself pointed out, and the deep recession that has hit Europe sent stocks in a wild ride throughout the entire week.

The Greek crisis stood aside as the main players of the turmoil shifted to the world’s largest economies’ recessions.

Latin American and Asian stock markets rallied on United States and Europe woes.

On the worse days – like Monday and Wednesday –the bourses spiraled out of control making headlines – Black Monday or Black Wednesday – as the media tried to make sense of the financial mess. Markets plummet reaching the year’s worse lows.

Moody’s United States downgrade from a triple A country to an AA+ one on the previous Friday sent shockwaves across the globe and boosted a severe speech by Obama reclaiming its AAA status. “No matter of what some agency rates the country, we will always be a triple A country,” the head of state lashed out.

Rumours of a possible downgrade for France aggravated the instable scenario for European Bourses, but turned to be pure speculation as rating agencies reaffirmed the countries’ triple A status as Sarkozy called on its economic team to reassure the markets.

"Whatever the impact of global uncertainty, of the announcement of the US downgrade by S&P, the nervousness of markets, regardless of any of these external parameters we will take the necessary measures to reach our targets," Minister Francois Baroin told reporters in news conference.

The European Central Bank swept into the bond market to buy up Italian and Spanish debt to try to create a safety net for the bourses, but the situation all through the globe remained unstable.

At the start of the week, stock losses wiped more than US$3.8 trillion from investor wealth globally in previous eight days sending investors rushing for safety into the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen and gold.

Bourses oscillated the entire week among the year’s unprecedented looses and moderate gains. But on Friday world stocks resumed its gains. Europe getting a boost from the short-selling ban on financial shares by France, Italy, Spain and Belgium.