Japan quake shakes markets

Consider this toxic mix of news:

• A widening war in oil-producing Libya.
• Rising concerns about the economies in both Europe and the U.S.
• And, now, an apocolyptic-like earthquake and deadly tsunami in Japan and racing across the Pacific.

That's a lot of bad mojo for global markets to digest for one week and — as you might expect — things are not going well so far today.

Global stocks dropped to their lowest levels in almost six weeks today. Tokyo stock futures were down 5 percent at one point, while markets fell just about everywhere else, too.

An index of global stocks, the MSCI, slid 0.6 percent to 334.82, the weakest point since the end of January. There was room to fall. Global stocks (as measured by this index) had risen to 30-month highs in the middle of February.

"Markets are in a correction mode. If you get natural disasters at a time when the markets are worried about something else, they can compound the worries," Bernard McAlinden, investment strategist at NCB Stockbrokers told Reuters.

"But there is no reason to suggest that the stock market is going to collapse. The underlying tendency of the market is still to have net buyers as money rotates at the margin out of safe-haven bonds, he added."

As for GlobalPost coverage of the historic quake and tsunami, see Patrick Winn's latest report, plus this roundup of some of the most amazing video clips gathered so far.