Stocks Plunge in Asia

The plunge in world stocks continued Friday morning in Asia, as markets in Japan and Korea opened sharply lower following a nearly 3% decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Early Friday, Japan's Nikkei was off 2.3% and South Korea's composite index was down 3.3%. The selloff followed a shellacking in Europe set off by a redemption halt at Paris' BNP Paribas, a sharp decline in the U.S. led by big losses at Goldman Sachs' (GS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) Alpha fund and news after the market closed that big lender Countrywide (CFC - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) warned in its quarterly report with regulators of "unprecedented disruptions" in mortgage securities markets.The swoon comes as investors worldwide struggle to digest losses tied to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the U.S., where defaults and delinquencies on loans made last year are already at unprecedented levels.

http://www.thestreet.com/_email/markets/worldmarkets/10373504.html

As in the days of Noah...