Global Stocks Surge on Credit-Market Moves

World stocks jumped today on government measures to stop the credit-market meltdown and news that the US and the UK were getting tough on short sellers, Bloomberg reports. Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse climbed 15% after four days of decline in Europe, while Australia’s Macquarie surged 38% after the US proposed a new institution to take the troubled assets off the balance sheets of financial firms and the UK banned short selling for the year.

The Brits’ move helped HBOs soar 52%. S&P futures, meanwhile, advanced 3.2%. “Hugely significant stories of government intervention are going to dominate market sentiment,” said an analyst. “There seems to be a coherent belief that this could actually be sufficient to draw a line under what has been a tumultuous 18 months for the markets.”
(More European stocks stories.)