These have benefited from investor panic, with prices rising as people sought safe havens.

This in turn led to investor panic and a bank run in mid-September 2007.

Hong Kong has a currency board, but was never itself the object of investor panic - it just happened to be living in a bad neighborhood.

The "bailout," in the form of a $51 billion line of credit collateralized by Mexico's revenue from oil exports, prevented investor panic and the Government's default.

Compared with 1987, when investor panic helped fuel the stock market's 508-point plunge, "it's just remarkable how people are very calm," Ms. Gordon said.

But he said he did not see investor panic because much of the money is not being reallocated to safe money market funds.

It's true that in July they grudgingly agreed to a corporate reform bill, which briefly calmed the growing investor panic.

C1 Warning on Brazil Economists warned that despite the strengths of Brazil's economy, investor panic could plunge the region into decline.

President Cardoso said the country would likely take no further measures to allay investor panic, which was not limited to Brazil.

When investor panic creates a stock market crisis, why not stop trading for a few hours and give calmer heads a chance to prevail?