東歐好吾掂

www.reuters.com 全文

LONDON (Reuters) - Economic gloom swept through Japan and several emerging nations on Monday and U.S. authorities bailed out struggling insurer AIG, buying $40 billion in new shares to prevent its collapse.

European bank results also bore the scars of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.

Rating agency Fitch cut Romania's credit rating to "junk" status in one of four emerging market downgrades and said the global financial crisis had put the ratings of South Korea, South Africa, Russia and Mexico in jeopardy.

Foreign investors have dumped east European assets, fearing that many in the region may not be able to handle large foreign debt burdens.

Fitch also cut the ratings of Bulgaria, Kazakhstan and Hungary.

The AIG rescue deal was announced as the insurer, once the world's largest insurer by market value, posted its biggest-ever quarterly loss -- $24.47 billion -- hurt again by writedowns on assets linked to subprime mortgages and capital losses.

The new package will allow the Fed to cut to $60 billion from $85 billion the total available to AIG under a credit facility set up in September.

"These new measures establish a more durable capital structure, resolve liquidity issues, facilitate AIG's execution of its plans to sell certain of its businesses in an orderly manner, promote market stability, and protect the interests of the U.S. government and taxpayers," the Fed said.

In Asia, Japanese manufacturers suffered their biggest quarterly slump in machinery orders in a decade, official data showed, boding ill for capital investment as the economy teeters on the brink of recession

Even fast-growing China has not proved immune.

Beijing approved a 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) government spending package to boost domestic demand and help the world's fourth-largest economy ride out the crisis.

China's stimulus comes on top of more than $4 trillion in government pledges around the world for bank bailouts, credit guarantees and fiscal spending to contain the damage from the worst financial turmoil in 80 years.