Cars, planes, retailing, engineering, food and building groups around the world cut earnings forecasts, production or jobs on Friday in one of the gloomiest days of the year so far for earnings and stockmarket confidence.

And there will be more of the same this week (See below).

The announcements from Australia to Brazil, Japan, North America and Europe, are definite signs of the rapidly approaching recession that is going to crunch non-bank earnings 40% or more from current levels, according to equity strategists at Citigroup in London.

The Australian dollar was hammered on Friday, shedding more than 12% in value against the yen and 8% against the US dollar in the biggest single one day fall since floating back in 1983.

It was for no apparent reason.

Citigroup’s team said in a note to global clients last week that ‘History suggests the severity of the coming economic downturn should be greater than normal.

“Recessions following previous periods of financial stress have lasted twice as long as normal. The lost economic output is also greater.

“Earnings Downturn – More severe economic weakness will likely drive a deeper and longer global corporate earnings downturn.

“We believe we are in the early stages of an earnings recession that could last for at least 2 years, with ROEs declining to 8% and EPS falling by 40-50%.

“Global equity valuations suggest investors have already discounted almost all of the expected decline in earnings. Current valuations are back down to 1970s averages.”

“Economic growth is slowing in emerging economies as well. In Asia Pacific our economists believe region-wide GDP growth in 2009 will be the slowest in eight years.

“However, given the current financial crisis is not emanating from their backyard this time, growth should be comfortably above the depths achieved during the Asian crisis.

“The outlook is darker for other emerging economies more dependent on capital inflows.”

Currencies lost ground against the US dollar and/or the yen: the Aussie dollar fell 8% and 12% or more against both currencies respectively on Friday. Copper, oil and most other commodities fell. Only nickel rose on the back of production cuts by the giant Vale group of Brazil, the world’s second biggest producer.

There was evidence hedge funds accounted for some of the turmoil on Friday. They are being forced to sell their stocks, bonds and other instruments to pay off their investors and lenders. Beyond that, investors are increasingly convinced that the global economy is headed for a long, painful recession.

The Citadel hedge fund group reassured investors at the weekend that it had enough liquidity and that Fed inspectors were not talking to it.

But nerves are taut in the hedge fund industry as investors recall their funds, billions of dollars in investments are sold off and the stability of more and more groups is being questioned (around $US200 billion has been wiped off the value of funds in the past few months and a couple of hundred funds of varying types have gone bust, been wound up or cut back business to where they are no longer significant players).

The flight to safety is hurting once-mighty currencies like Britain’s pound. On Friday, worries about how the financial crisis would affect Britain’s economy caused the pound to lose 8c against the dollar, falling to $1.53.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped 312.30 points, or 3.6% to 8,378.95, in a volatile session that saw the blue-chip index down as much as 500% at one stage.

The Australian share market wiped $30 billion from its value to end the week at its lowest level in almost four years as the All Ordinaries dropped 107.7 points, or 2.73%.

That was a loss of 3% over the week, which was relative outperformance compared to the sharp falls on Wall Street, in Tokyo and in London. The Australian dollar fell heavily on Friday to close down almost 6% over the week at 62.20 USc.

The South African rand plunged 11%.

Even the 1.5 million barrel a day production cut by OPEC failed to stop oil prices falling in the face of swelling fears of a deep global recession.

In New York the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 3.5% and Nasdaq slid 3.2%. Both trimmed steeper falls in morning trading. But there was a sharp fall away in the market right at the end as fund selling again hit prices.

For the week, the Dow lost 5.3%, the S&P 500 lost 6.8% and the Nasdaq fell 9.3%.

So far this month, the Dow is off 22.8%, the S&P 500 is off 24.7% and Nasdaq is down 25.8%, on track for the worst month since the October 1987 crash.

In the S&P’s case, this October could end up being the worst month ever in the post-World War II era.

The trio is down more than 40% since the Dow and S&P 500 hit all-time highs a year ago and the Nasdaq hit a bull-market high.

The Australian SPI 200 futures were 37 points lower at 3840, pointing to a lower start today.

In the US the bad news about banks continued: Authorities in the state of Georgia have shut down a failed suburban Atlanta bank. The Georgia Department of Banking and Finance closed the two branches of Alpha Bank and Trust in Alpharetta on Friday, the 16th US bank to fail this year.

Iceland’s government said it had asked for $US2 billion of support from the International Monetary Fund, the first Western country to do so since 1976; Belarus (next to Russia) joined Iceland, Pakistan, Hungary and Ukraine in requesting at least $US20 billion of emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund to help repay debt.

The IMF reached agreement with Ukraine on a $US16.5 billion loan to help support the nation’s financial system as turmoil in global credit markets and recession concerns roil the eastern European country.

The two-year stand-by loan will be conditional on parliamentary approval of legislation to support the country’s banks. Ukraine will also need to balance the budget and address the current-account deficit.

Argentina, struggling to avoid its second default in a decade, is seeking to raise funds by nationalizing $US29 billion of private pension fund assets, a move that has set off alarm bells in Spain where the country’s biggest banks have huge loans and investments in Argentina (and Brazil and Mexico where the market and currency have plunged).

The IMF said at the weekend that it had tentatively agreed to the Iceland loan and announced it had set aside hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue stricken nations. (According to articles in the Economist and the Financial Times at the weekend, it could finance up to $US250 billion or more in loans and standby credits.)

“The IMF has more than 200 billion dollars of loanable funds and can draw on additional resources through two standing borrowing arrangements with groups of IMF member countries,” the institution said on its website.

The fund is discussing plans to offer so-called hard-currency loans of three to six months at a multiple of the country’s quota of up to five times that figure.

At that suggested multiple, South Korea’s IMF quota of $US4.4 billion, means it could get as much as $US21.8 billion under the program. Mexico might qualify for $US23.5 billion, with $US22.6 billion for Brazil and $US10 billion for Poland.

Iceland Friday became the first western nation to seek aid from the IMF since the UK in 1976. The nation’s economy will shrink as much as 10%. It’s part of a multi group finance package that could total more than $US6 billion.

China, Japan and 11 other Asian nations agreed to set up a $US80 billion fund to fight the credit crunch, The Bank of Japan will be one of those central banks helping fund the Iceland bailout, according to media reports last week, along with central banks in Scandinavia.

More than 40 Asian and European leaders called for an overhaul of World War II-era banking rules.

The leaders “pledged to undertake effective and comprehensive reform of the international monetary and financial systems”, according to a statement issued after the meeting in Beijing at the weekend. Bloomberg quoted Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao as saying that “we need even more financial regulation to ensure financial safety”.

The US Treasury had planned to announced capital injections into 20 new banks on Friday, but will allow the banks to reveal the deals. PNC got $US7 billion to help in a takeover of a large regional bank based in Ohio.

The Treasury Department was also reportedly studying how it could give relief to bond and mortgage insurance companies under the $US700 billion US financial services rescue package.

And while General Motors has intensified negotiations to buy Chrysler’s auto operations, US reports say it now has plans to seek government support for any deal.

Other news from the car industry was appalling on Friday: truck giant Volvo is sacking over a 1500 more employees after it reported that third quarter orders fell to 115, from more than 41,000 in the same quarter of 2007. It has already cut over one thousand employees.

Chrysler announced Friday that it is sacking 5,000 of its 32,000 white collar employees in the US and Europe as soon as it can as its parent, Cerberus, tries to get a cosy merger deal done with General Motors.

Daimler was reported yesterday by German media to be considering a month long production holiday at all its car factories at Christmas to try and cut stocks of unwanted cars and to avoid starting to lay off employees.

The break in production would begin on December 11 and last until January 12, according to the reports. Daimler, the first luxury car maker to present its quarterly results, unveiled big falls in profits on Thursday and issued a new profit warning for 2009 because of the global banking crisis which has hit Germany and its big US markets very hard.

“The financial crisis is turning into an economic crisis,” Daimler chairman Dieter Zetsche told a telephone news conference on Thursday and it had provoked “in recent weeks a dramatic slump on our major markets”.

Volkswagen says it will make more cars this year, but 2009 is looking gloomy, so it is cutting upwards of 750 contract employees in Germany by not renewing their contracts over the rest of the year. Volkswagen reports its latest financial results this Thursday night, our time.

French automobile giants PSA Peugeot-Citroen and Renault ordered huge production cuts, while Japan’s hi-tech giant Sony Corp and Europe’s biggest airline Air France-KLM issued profits warnings.

Renault has ordered almost all its French plants closed for at least one week and shorter shutdowns in Turkey, Russia and Slovenia. PSA Peugeot-Citroen chairman Christian Strieff said he had ordered “massive” production cuts as the group forecast a 17% drop in car sales in Western Europe in the fourth quarter (after an 8%-plus drop in September).

Air France-KLM shares fell around 9% as the airline not only said that it would be “very difficult” to meet its billion-euro earnings target, but also revealed plans to hack costs by up to 1.2 billion euros, which can only mean job losses.

Toyota confirmed it sold fewer cars in the September quarter than the year before, the first quarterly fall since 2003. Japanese car companies start reporting first half and second quarter results this week with Honda due to release its figures tomorrow night and Toyota a week Wednesday.

Toyota said global auto sales retreated 4.3% in the September quarter, from a year earlier, the first drop since 2001. The stock fell 6.4%. It’s off more than 40% this year and Tokyo as a whole is down more than 50%.

Brazil’s Vale, one of the world’s top three miners, said that Chinese demand for metals was down sharply but that it wouldn’t ship iron ore without a 12% price increase to match prices its Australian rivals were being paid.

But it is cutting nickel production in China and delaying start ups at new mines in Brazil and in New Caledonia, and reviewing other mining operations.

In Britain, official figures confirmed the country was about to enter a recession, with third quarter growth contracting by a sharp 0.50%.

The official figures on Friday supported forecasts earlier in the week of a recession from Bank of England head, Mervyn King and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

Japan’s Nikkei index plunged 9.60% on Friday and below 8,000 points for the first time in more than five years.

The close was 7,649.08, a level not seen since April 2003 and just 41 points from the lowest since 1982. Asia’s and Japan’s biggest construction materials group, Taiheiyo Cement Corp, said it incurred a first half loss because of falling demand in Japan. The loss was more than double earlier estimates.

Hong Kong fell 8.3%.

South Korea’s Kospi index dropped 11% on Friday to its lowest close since May 2005. The index fell 20.5% last week, the worst drop since 1987, while the won also slumped.

India’s Sensitive Index plunged 11% Friday, its biggest slump in 16 years, after the Reserve Bank said it will continue fighting inflation, reducing the likelihood of easier lending to bolster growth.

The central bank surprised a week ago with a 1% cut in its key lending rate, but appeared to cast doubt on that on Friday.

European shares had lost up to 10% in early trading Friday in a replay of the horrific Friday two weeks earlier. French shares fell 8.0% early on to finish at five-year lows, off 3.5% at the end. Frankfurt’s DAX 30 index and London’s FTSE 100 were off around 5%.

Sony, a leader of corporate Japan, saw its shares plunge 14% Friday after releasing forecasts of a lower profit on Thursday night. Sony has a board meeting in Tokyo this week to consider cuts.

ArcelorMittal, the world’s biggest steel producer, shut smelting furnaces on a temporary basis in France, Germany and Belgium, according to union chiefs who met with management. It is reported to be reviewing its $US35 billion global expansion plan.

US figures show that 19 of the country’s 25 steel blast furnaces are either going to close or be shut down for varying periods of time, so great has been the drop in demand in the past two months, especially from the car industry.

Timken, the world’s biggest ball bearings maker, has slashed production and earnings forecasts because of falling demand from the car and construction machinery sectors (Caterpillar).

Timken blamed the cut in its fourth-quarter profit guidance on “the timing of certain raw-material cost recoveries and lower automotive industry demand”.

In other words demand is now weakening so fast that it can’t put prices up to try and recovery the earlier surge in steel costs during the year.

Spain’s unemployment rate jumped to 11.33%, a four year high, as the collapse of the housing and construction sector throws more people out of work. The worries about Brazil and especially Argentina are going to take their toll on Spain’s previously solid banking sector.

New figures meanwhile showed Britain’s economy shrank by 0.5% in the three months to September, compared with the previous quarter, marking the first contraction since 1992.

The UK economy slammed to a halt in the second quarter with zero growth and the slump accelerated into the red as unemployment surged, home sales, construction, industrial output and retail sales plunged and inflation rose.

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