LONDON — The tsunami of global stock sell-offs swept through Europe on Friday as shareholders deserted the markets in droves, pushing down stock prices in a frenzy some dubbed Red October.
Exchanges that had hit record highs just a year ago plunged almost from the moment they opened. London's FTSE 100 lost 10% of its value within half an hour of the opening bell.
The glumness within the financial industry is increasingly being matched by fear in what Europeans call the "real economy," or the workaday world. Small investors, from pensioners to assembly-line workers, are bracing for a sharp decline in living standards -- and some are blaming the United States.
"This economic crisis is ruining us," Cesare Tesori, 65, said as he was out shopping in Rome. "Before when I needed money, I could at least go to the bank and get cash from the little savings we had. Now, all my investments in stocks -- especially the American ones -- have fallen so dramatically that we were advised not to sell them because we would lose too much money. So this means I can't access my money."
Retired from his job with Italian state television, Tesori sees little but deprivation ahead. "I guess the only thing left for us is to avoid using the washing machine in order to save electricity and start washing our clothes by hand, like our grandparents used to do," he said. "This is what the American economy did to us."
The London exchange closed down 9%, below the psychologically important threshold of 4,000 points, the index's lowest level in five years. Bourses in Paris and Frankfurt bled 8% and 7% of their value, respectively.
The outlook was similarly depressing in Switzerland and Italy. In other European countries, from Iceland in the west to Romania in the east, trading had to be suspended.
Seemingly erratic action by governments compounded the feeling of uncertainty.
In Russia, whose RTS exchange is worth less than half its value compared with last year, officials announced earlier this week a two-day suspension of trading. They then discarded that plan and reopened the markets, before closing them again Friday.
"The market regulators don't have any experience acting in these crisis conditions," said oil analyst Denis Zakharov. "They don't have a consistent policy. It makes investors nervous."
