Japan ushers in corporate earnings season - drops 4.8%

For the Wall Street apologists who would rather everyone just stops talking about the bad news on Wall Street, please generate some good news. Japanese markets reflected the general sense of doom and gloom for the new quarterly earnings season. Corporate earnings look like they're going to produce the poor results many feared and of course our old friends in banking are likely to be in trouble again.

Fears of steep losses at corporate bellwethers from Citigroup to Sony hit Asian shares on Tuesday, signaling the extent of the global economic slowdown and bolstering less risky assets such as government debt.

The euro extended its slide to near a one-month low against the dollar as the European Central Bank looks set to cut interest rates this week in response to slowing growth, while oil prices continued to fall after slumping nearly 8 percent on Monday on fears that recessions in some countries will slash energy demand.