AP Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the US government "will never" lose its sterling credit rating despite big budget deficits and a newly increased debt limit that now tops $US14 trillion ($A16.19 trillion). Geithner says in an interview broadcast on Sunday that in times of

"We need to continue to deliver the stimulus to which we are mutually committed and begin looking at exit strategies to move to a more sustainable fiscal track," Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters yesterday after chairing a meeting of counterparts and central bankers from the

``The problems currently faced by peripheral Europe could be a dress rehearsal for what the US and UK may face further down the road,'' Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank in London, wrote in a research note today. Credit-default swaps on the debt of Greece, Spain and Portugal rose to

The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 268.37 points (2.61 per cent) to end at 10,002.18, after a brief dip below 10,000 for the first time since November. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped a hefty 65.48 points (2.99 points) to 2125.43 and the broad-market Standard & Poor's