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From the Economist in London, this is Money Talks, a weekly programme about news in the worlds of business, finance and economics.

I'm Andrew Palmer, the Business Affairs Editor.

It's been a volatile start to the week, with markets tumbling around the world, and banks leading

the downward charge.

With me to bring some sense and order to the volatility,

our Philip Coggin, our Buttonwood columnist,

and Ryan Avent, our free exchange columnist.

Phil, let's start with you. It's been a bad start to the year, bad week.

Is this just generalised gloom about the state of the world economy or is there something

more specific going on?

I think we have moved on in that we had two sources of alarm in the first

few weeks. The first was that the emerging markets were continuing to slow China

people were worried about and that this would have knock on effects in the developed

world and that the US economy might not be as strong as people hoped.

...