Whew – what a wild week! Global stock markets and commodities tumbled, whereas government bonds and the U.S. dollar surged amid mounting fears that the ongoing turmoil in financial markets was foreshadowing a hard landing for the US and Europe.

The first-ever trillion-dollar loss (as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Index) on Wall Street came on Monday in the wake of the U.S. House of Representatives failing to gather enough votes to pass the $700 billion bank rescue package. Globally, more than $1.7 trillion was wiped off the MSCI World Index.

Considering the entire history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1896, Monday’s decline of 777 points ranked as the largest points decline in history (see post “Fear Grips Global Marketsâ€