Today marks the beginning of the month of the dead, which is spookily appropriate when you look at the markets this afternoon. Worries that more large write-downs are on the way from the banks has spooked people in a big way. Shortly after New York opened, the Dow Jones and FTSE 100 were each off about 2 per cent (although they have since recovered a bit) but Citigroup fell 7 per cent and Barclays fell more than 5 per cent at one point.

There was delicious irony earlier in the sight of Merrill Lynch analysts downgrading UBS on fears of a further $8bn of writedowns. More significant seems to have been a downgrade of Citigroup by a CIBC World Markets analyst, who said the bank may need to raise $30bn, possibly forcing it to sell assets, raise capital or slash the dividend. FT Alphaville have been doing a Markets Live Special this afternoon and they have some excellent coverage of what’s going on.