World
markets bounced back Monday following last week's massive stock
sell-off. The rebound occurred as U.S. and European leaders intensified
their efforts to ease a credit crisis that has shaken global economies
over the past month
On Monday, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index saw a huge 1,434 point jump after a 7 per cent loss on Friday. Japanese markets were closed on Monday for a public holiday, but Australian and Singapore indices also climbed back more than 5 per cent, and the Chinese and South Korean benchmarks added about 3.7 per cent.
The positive news wasn't limited just to Asia and Australia. Britain's FTSE-100 climbed 5.6 per cent, Germany's DAX was up 6.4 per cent, and France's CAC-40 jumped 7 per cent.
U.S. markets appear to be headed for a huge rebound today, as well. Stock futures were up significantly hours before the opening bell.
* Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 398, or 4.76 per cent, to 8,768
* Standard & Poor's 500 index futures rose 51.30, or 5.76 per cent, to 942.30
* Nasdaq 100 index futures rose 62.00, or 4.83 per cent, to 1,344.50
The markets appear to be responding to efforts by European and North American leaders to help their banking sectors, which have suffered a crisis in capital and confidence because of bad mortgages.
On Monday, the U.S. Federal Reserve and four other central banks, including the European Central Bank, unveiled new measures to help open up tight credit markets. The Bank of England, The European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank, announced they will provide unlimited U.S. dollar funds to financial institutions.
Australia says it will guarantee bank deposits for three years and three of Britain's largest banks said they will take US$63 billion in public money to help their balance sheets.
In a bid to ease the global credit crisis, European countries that share the euro currency jointly decided Sunday to offer temporary refinancing guarantees for banks. But even with government action, a full economic recovery for global economies will take time.
Warren Jestin, chief economist for Scotiabank, told CTV's Canada AM on Monday that the U.S. economy will remain weak for about another year.
"The most important part, though, is what happens after we get this mess behind us, after Main Street begins to recover, Wall Street begins to settle down."
"My suspicion is that we've changed the structure of things in a way that will not support a borrow-to-buy type of environment, so that U.S. growth is going to be slower. I wouldn't be surprised if European growth is slower, too, and in Canada, well we're going to be trending along roughly at the U.S. rate -- 2.5 per cent growth may be as good as we can do."
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