Trichet exit sparks Greece rescue talk

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> closed on Monday below the 10,000 points for the first time since November, weighed down by the euro debt woes.

The MSCI index of Asian shares outside Japan slid to a five-month low on Tuesday.

"Sentiment is still weak amid deepening concerns about southern European nations' sovereign rating risks," said Juhn Jong-kyu, a market analyst at Samsung Securities in Seoul.

Governments in Athens, Lisbon and Madrid are pushing through budget cuts to tighten their fiscal belts and restore confidence in their economies and ability to service their debt.

But they face domestic opposition to the plans.

Greek civil servants threatened on Monday to stage more strikes in protest at the austerity measures, raising worries over the government's ability to rein in its deficit that has been swollen by the global crisis and billions of euros in stimulus spending.

A failure to press ahead with austerity measures is likely to increase pressure on the three state's bonds and push up borrowing costs in a vicious circle that economists say could force the bloc to bail out one of its members or even prompt a country to be expelled from the EU.

(Additional reporting by Wayne Cole and Anirban Nag in SYDNEY, Yoko Matsudaira in TOKYO, Jungyoun Park in SEOUL and Krista Hughes in FRANKFURT; Writing by Kazunori Takada; Editing by Neil Fullick)