A wild stock market day.

The U.S. and European economies are "dangerously close to recession," Morgan Stanley economists wrote in a report. "It won't take much in the form of additional shocks to tip the balance."

 

In the United States, there were reports that more people joined the unemployment line last week than a week earlier, gasoline prices contributed to higher inflation and manufacturing slowed in the mid-Atlantic.

In Europe, bank stocks slid on worries about the region's debt problems. In Asia, Japan's exports fell for the fifth straight month.