Washington - Fears of a global recession intensified on Friday after US lawmakers dashed the auto industry's hopes of a rapid bailout and grim news on the jobs front continued to pile up.
Stock exchanges endured another roller-coaster ride at the end of a brutal trading week as Japan said it was ready to take action if necessary to tackle wild swings in its financial markets.
More governments meanwhile announced their readiness to intervene to protect businesses from the fallout of the crisis.
The auto industry was in a state of depression after Democrats in the US Congress put off a vote on a bailout for the "Big Three" manufacturers until at least December, and ordered them to come up with a new restructuring plan.
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said it was a "sad reality" that despite a bipartisan deal by senators from states which have millions of jobs depending on the industry, that there was not yet sufficient support for a bailout.
He said the chiefs of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors must come up with a restructuring plan and Congress would consider whether to provide billions of dollars in funding in December.
This money is not a gift
While the US auto industry was being rebuffed, the head of Ford Germany said the European Union should make around €40bn in loans available to the continent's ailing auto
sector.
Bernhard Mattes said such assistance would not be state aid but was "in order to allow all European carmakers the possibility to meet EU requirements on fuel efficiency and emissions etc more quickly."
"This is money that has interest on it and that has to be paid back, so not a gift," Mattes said in an interview with Bild. "It is about modern technology and competitiveness on the world market."
The car industry's woes were highlighted again when Toyota announced plans to cut 3 000 temporary jobs at its domestic
plants in Japan in response to worsening sales.
The latest losses came a day after Peugeot Citroen announced
plans to slash 3 550 jobs in France and two other Japanese firms said they were scrapping a total of 2 700 jobs.
"It's one car crash after another," said GFT derivatives head Martin Slaney in Australia.
"The risk of global economic recession is deepening by the day. The prospect of The Great Depression Two is a genuine one and is plain scaring investors."
The decision by senators to delay any decision on whether to aid the auto industry rattled Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 5.56% overnight.
Euro slumps at record pace
Asian stocks spent much of the day in negative territory but then staged a late turnaround with dealers saying stocks appeared to have been oversold during several days of heavy falls, creating room for a rebound.
Tokyo ended 2.7% higher, Hong Kong closed 2.9% up and
Sydney gained 1.9%.
"Nobody has seen the market like this before. The market can do funny things though, and when it finally does turn around it is probably going to rally hard," said CMC Markets trader James Foulsham.
Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said Japan was ready to take
action if necessary to tackle wild swings on Tokyo's financial markets, "Whether it is the stock market or foreign exchange, sudden and extreme changes are not welcomed," Nakagawa told a press conference.
"If we see such cases, we must take appropriate and necessary actions."
European stock markets enjoyed slight gains in early trade, with London up 1.08%, Frankfurt gaining 1.26% and Paris
climbing 1.24%.
The continent's economic woes were highlighted by the results of a new survey which showed business activity in the 15 nations sharing the euro slumped in November at the fastest pace on record.
The eurozone's purchasing managers' index (PMI), compiled by data and research group Markit, dropped to 39.7 points in November from 43.6 in October, according to an initial estimate.
Meanwhile Singapore announced a $1.5bn package to help its businesses gain access to credit amid a recession in the
city-state while India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh vowed to use every fiscal and monetary tool to fend off the impact of the financial crisis.
- AFP