* Daily carnage report: Bloodbath in Asia, bloodbath in Europe, GE Capital scales back lending, U.S. lawmakers weigh a new stimulus package, metal values dive, Citi gives up on Wachovia, Hong Kong bankruptcy risk rises, Lehman CDS auction timeline and Jim Rogers warns of an “inflation holocaust.”
* If you can no longer get into investment banking, should you become a ski bum instead?
* Welcome to The United States of Argentina.
* Paul Volcker: We have the tools to manage this crisis.
* Not everything is gloom and doom in the VC market, as it seems Symantec is paying $695 million for UK anti-spam company MessageLabs.
* AIG cancels trip to the Ritz. Joe Weisenthal is conflicted.
* Sequoia Capital recently held a meeting for portfolio companies, in which it laid out the bleakness to come (semi-related: I’ve been hearing rumors that Sequoia has decided to cut bait with about a dozen portfolio cos.). Anyway, Eric Eldon got a copy of the PowerPoint deck. Here it is: