After the Nikkei Index dropped more than 9 per cent on October 7, Japanese investors remain jittery about whether a worldwide, co-ordinated cut in interest-rates will shore up the markets and whether the US bank bailout will do any good.

Japan's banks are in pretty good shape: they've been through something like this once before - in the late 1980s and early 1990s when a bubble in Japanese real estate popped.

But, as David Hawkins reports, that's small comfort and hasn't kept the diseased US economy from infecting the Japanese stock market.