Nightmare on Wall St as Dow falls 450

The US stock market took another nosedive as the American banking system appeared even shakier and investors worried that the financial crisis is spinning so far out of control that even government rescues cannot stop it.

The Dow Jones industrial average, which only two days earlier had suffered its steepest drop since the days after the September 11 2001 attacks, lost another 450 points. About $700bn (€490bn) in investments vanished.