Desperate to contain the crisis, governments across Europe have pledged about 2.0 trillion euros (2.7 trillion dollars) to bring banks back from the brink of collapse.

US President George W. Bush and his Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson were Tuesday to unveil details of a comprehensive financial rescue package that includes investing hundreds of billions of government dollars into several troubled banks.

Governments around the globe launched a multi-pronged attack on the finance crisis, as President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson prepared Tuesday to unveil the next step in the US response.

Singapore is in for a "rough ride" for a year or more as Asia weathers the global "financial storm", says Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as new figures point to its first technical recession in six years. "The world is caught up in a financial storm, and dark clouds fill our immediate horizon."

The world's major economies prepared to hold crisis talks Friday in an attempt to halt a massive sell-off on global stock markets, as Asian shares were pummelled by another day of panic selling. The talks in Washington were expected to see finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven richest nations hammer out emergency measures to contain the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Singapore has become the first Asian economy to fall into recession, analysts said Friday, after the government revised downward its full-year growth estimate and eased monetary policy for the first time in years. The Ministry of Trade and Industry lowered the city-state's full-year growth forecast to around three percent, citing a slowdown in the global economy and key domestic sectors.

Oil prices fell almost four dollars in Asian trade Friday, after a "bloodbath" on world markets, with traders increasingly convinced a global economic slowdown will hurt energy demand, dealers said. Brent North Sea crude sank below the 80-dollar mark for the first time in about a year. Dealers said economic fears outweighed news that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will hold an emergency meeting next month to discuss the global crisis and its impact on energy demand.

World stock markets suffered another dizzying slide Wednesday, with losses in Europe topping 8.0 percent, as traumatized investors brushed aside central bank interest rate cuts aimed at boosting confidence. After a calamitous day in Asia, Wall Street slid 2.0 percent, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the red for the sixth consecutive session.

Major central banks launched coordinated interest rate cuts on Wednesday in a new gamble to counter the global financial crisis but failed to quell panic on global stock markets.

The rate cuts and Britain's move to pump 87 billion dollars into stricken banks were designed to underpin shaky confidence in the financial system.

The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday that it had authorized a new 37.8-billion-dollar cash infusion into troubled insurance giant AIG, which was nationalized last month. The Fed said that an 85-billion-dollar loan facility made available to AIG last month had been drawn down and that the new cash would be transferred from the New York Fed, which would take securities from AIG and inject cash in return.

The International Monetary Fund said Wednesday that the global economy was sinking in a maelstrom of financial turmoil and faced a painful crawl toward recovery in 2009. "The world economy is now entering a major downturn in the face of the most dangerous shock in mature financial markets since the 1930s," the IMF said in its biannual World Economic Outlook (WEO) report.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned Wednesday that more financial firms would go bankrupt in the United States and that recent market turmoil had "seriously impacted" the economy. Paulson cautioned that a 700-billion-dollar government rescue package for the financial sector approved last week would not mean an end to bankruptcies and that it would take several weeks to put in place.

Japan and Australia pumped more than 20 billion dollars into the money markets Wednesday but failed to save free-falling Asian stock markets from another massive sell-off. Hong Kong meanwhile slashed interest rates by one percentage point, but like other such moves in recent days, the measure did little to stem dramatic losses in the face of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The US government's budget deficit has ballooned in fiscal 2008 to 438 billion dollars (322 billion euros), or 3.1 percent of GDP, as the economic downturn began to bite, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The estimate compares to the 162 billion dollar shortfall that represented 1.2 percent of GDP in fiscal 2007, said the CBO, which monitors federal spending on behalf of the Senate and House of Representatives.

London's Olympic chiefs are having to rework their budgets as the global credit crunch squeezes private funding for the 2012 Games -- although Team GB's success in Beijing has helped boost the coffers. The British government expects about seven billion pounds of private sector money to go into the Olympics and the regeneration of the area around Stratford, east of the British capital.

Asian stocks were pummelled again Wednesday as fears grew that policymakers may be powerless to stop the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression. US and European authorities launched fresh initiatives Tuesday to try to ease a global credit crunch, but the moves failed to boost market confidence as Wall Street and other stock markets sank to new lows.

Stocks plunged for a second day running on Wall Street on Tuesday, while those in Europe were mixed, on persistent anxiety over the health of the banking sector -- and despite central bank initiatives to shore up confidence. Wall Street opened with solid gains, bolstering both spirits and prices in Europe after the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and EU finance ministers all announced new measures to stanch a credit crisis and protect savers' deposits.