TELEGRAPH UK: Americans and Europeans have so far confessed to $130bn of the estimated $400bn to $500bn of wealth that has vanished into the sub-prime hole.

Japan is the next sub-prime flashpoint There is still $300bn of bad debt out there, and Japan could be hiding most of it. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports Just as battered investors had begun to glimpse signs of recovery in America, the next shoe has dropped with an almighty thud in Japan. Echoes are rumbling across the Far East. Somebody, somewhere, must be sitting on a vast nexus of undisclosed losses. We may find out soon enough whether the hold-outs are in Japan. The banks have to come clean under the country's strict new audit codes by the end of the tax year in March.