Stock markets are in for a tense week after Friday's U.S. non-farms payroll report for August showed the first concrete signs that problems with beginnings in the subprime mortgage sector are spreading to the overall U.S. economy.

It was the first monthly decline in employment since August 2003 as problems that started with sharply rising defaults in the U.S. subprime mortgage sector morphed into a full-blown crisis on credit markets where liquidity has stalled, forcing central banks to intervene by injecting billions of dollars.