The White House yesterday called an emergency summit of the world's key economies for November 15 as fallout from the global financial crisis hit emerging market nations, causing havoc from Budapest to Buenos Aires.

Stock markets around the world succumbed to a new wave of severe losses as the mayhem gripping emerging market countries, which had hoped to stay at least partly insulated from the financial convulsions, fuelled fear of global recession.

Panicky investors failed to find any solace in signs that radical action by Western central banks and governments is starting to bear fruit, easing measures of financial stress, such as the cost of borrowing between banks. The threat of a worldwide slump overshadowed signs that the authorities' emergency action is starting to work.

In New York, another steep sell-off sent shares to five-year lows, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing down 514.45, or 5.69 per cent, at 8,519.21. The broader-based S&P 500 closed down by 6.1 per cent at 896.80.

The losses came as country after country was battered by the economic tempest. Hungary was forced to order a three percentage point rise in interest rates to try to fend off markets' assault on its badly exposed forint currency. Pakistan, Belarus and Ukraine all sought emergency assistance from the International Monetary Fund, joining Iceland in the long queue now forming at the IMF's door.

In Argentina, shares fell 10 per cent and government bonds 1 per cent after Buenos Aires unveiled plans to nationalise private pension funds.

In Brazil, an automatic 30-minute trading halt was triggered on the São Paulo stock exchange when the benchmark Bovespa index fell 10 per cent.

World leaders and finance ministers from the G20 - the Group of Seven leading Western economies plus the most important emerging market nations, including China and Russia - will gather in Washington on November 15, 11 days after the US presidential election, to debate further worldwide action to tackle the worst effects of the still increasing crisis.

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