STEVE INSKEEP, Host: NPR's business news starts with the slipping financial markets.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, Host: As people were celebrating the new president, investors were dumping bank stocks out of fear that the crisis in financial institutions in the United States and Great Britain might be getting worse.
Nearly every stock market in Asia fell Wednesday. In Japan and South Korea, leading indicators slid 2 percent. Hong Kong was down almost 3 percent. Investors there were reacting in part to Tuesday's plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average. The 4 percent drop in the Dow was one of the worst stock market declines on any Inauguration Day.