Sydney - Australian stocks lost ground at the opening bell Monday following the selloff last week on Wall Street.

The ASX 200 gave up 107 points, or 2.2 per cent, in the first hour of trading to 4,587.

Shares fell across the board, with mining stocks hit hardest because the financial crisis is slowing economies around the world and crimping demand for raw materials.

Sydney - Australians welcomed Saturday the US Congressional approval of a financial services' industry bail-out package, but doubted it would end turbulence on world markets.

"This is a positive step forward in restoring stability to the global banking system," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said. "But there's still much, much more work to be done."

Opposition Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull said the fall on US stock markets after the bill went through was evidence the crisis was far from over.

Washington - While US President George W Bush signed a much- awaited 700-billion-dollar rescue package deemed critical to keep the US economy afloat, it appeared Wall Street had already turned the next dark corner.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1.5 per cent of its value on Friday, a surprise to those who expected that the bail-out's approval would buy at least one day of goodwill.

Washington - Simon Johnson, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, warned of a global recession as a result of the devastating financial crisis that has struck the United States and Europe.

In a telephone interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, Johnson said the 700-billion-dollar rescue package passed by the US Congress and signed by President George W Bush on Friday was only a "stop-gap measure" that would not prevent a serious contraction of the world's largest economy.

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Washington - US stocks rallied for the first time in three days as the US House of Representatives began debate Friday on a new version of the finance rescue plan that the White House says is desperately needed.

Wachovia Corp rallied as much as 80 per cent after Wells Fargo & Co, the biggest West Coast bank, agreed to buy the lender for about 15.1 billion dollars.

The US jobless rate remained steady at a rate of 6.1 per cent in September, unchanged from the month before, but non-farm payrolls have shed another 159,000 jobs and employment continued to fall in construction, manufacturing and retail trade, the US Department of Labour said Friday.