(The Dow is down 350 as of 1:44PM Eastern)

If only the US was the only country experiencing stock market problems. China’s Shanghai exchange is about one third of its peak number last November. Russia had been experiencing a big boom in recent years courtesy of the oil run but they may be coming to an end, which could mean instability in Russia.

Russia halted stock and bond trading on Wednesday amid the worst market falls since the country’s 1998 financial collapse and the Finance Ministry pledged a total of $60 billion of funds to help local banks.

Trading in shares, bonds and mutual funds on Russia’s MICEX and RTS exchanges was suspended after less than two hours, preventing further selling on top of Tuesday’s record-breaking falls.

It was not clear when the bourses would reopen.

“The crisis has a shade of panic to it. The decision to stop trading was motivated by the desire to remove this panic element,” said Stanislav Ponomarenko, head of research for Russia at ING bank.

Russian stocks, once touted by the government as a safe haven, have now plunged around 60 percent since May.

Traders say global financial turmoil mixed with falling oil prices and Moscow’s war with Georgia have formed a lethal cocktail.

“We don’t give a damn anymore as to what happens in the West. The market is falling as people are in dire need for cash,” said Maxim Gulevich, director of equities trading at UBS.

The Kremlin was silent on the crisis on Wednesday but Deputy Finance Minister Pyotr Kazakevich, announcing new measures to boost liquidity, said there was no fundamental problem.

“What we have on the market is mainly a confidence crisis and only secondly a liquidity crisis,” Kazakevich said.