Global Markets Follow Wall Street Down

Stock markets around the world are tumbling in the wake of yesterday's Wall Street meltdown. Market indexes across Asia saw major dives, and European markets are down in early trading, AP reports. The sell-off is "just a knee-jerk reaction to what's going on," said an analyst in Australia, which saw its biggest market plunge since early 2009. "We're going down simply on the fear that Italy can't pay its debts."

"You have a combination of these financial problems in Europe, and then you have the reality that growth in advanced economies is down to a trickle," a market analyst tells the Wall Street Journal. "These are basically the two pressure points leading markets into a nosebleed situation today." Big investors seeking to shift their assets into the safe haven of a bank account will find that at least one bank has started charging them for the privilege. (More stock market stories.)