In London, a particularly gloomy outlook for the UK economy from the Bank of England's monetary policy committee sent the FTSE 100 sharply down while the prospect of several large interest-rate cuts sent sterling into freefall on the foreign exchange.
Leading the shares in their steep decline were the clutch of international miners listed in London, whose businesses are highly geared to a continuing boom in metals demand, not only in the mature Western markets of the US and Europe but in China, India and the other soaraway Asian economies.
Kazakhmys, Vedanta Resources, Antofagasta, Xstrata and BHP Billiton all tumbled by around 10 per cent as the FTSE 100 slumped 145.91 points to 4083.82, a decline of 3.45 per cent - an historically large plunge for the London blue-chip index, only made to seem ordinary by the wild stock-market gyrations of recent weeks.
The FTSE 100 was not alone. The DAX in Frankfurt and the CAC in Paris were down by around 3.3 per cent following falls overnight of nearly 7 per cent on the Nikkei in Tokyo and of more than 5 per cent on the Hang Seng in Hong Kong.
Emerging markets were particularly battered in today's wave of selling, triggering a number of emergency moves by central banks. Hungary whacked up its interest rates by three full points in an attempt to protect its crashing currency, the forint. Belarus said it had requested credit from the International Monetary Fund, and the Ukraine said it was likely to follow suit.
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