World Markets Continue Slide

A new economic quarter begins Monday, but world markets aren’t turning a new page: they continued their slide, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index down to its lowest point since May 2009 and Europe’s Stoxx Europe 600 Index continuing to tumble after its worst quarter since 2008. The concern continues to be Europe’s debt. “The big issue in the euro zone remains avoiding contagion from the all-but-inevitable Greek sovereign default,” Larry Hatheway, the head of macro strategy at UBS AG in London, wrote Monday. On Sunday, the Greeks announced that they would ax 30,000 public-sector workers and that the government would not reach the deficit targets set as terms of their bailout by the EU and IMF.