But despite a case of crisis jitters, many economic experts say that unless world policymakers suffer collective amnesia, a rerun of the 1930s Great Depression is unlikely.

"The fact that we are well-versed in what happened then and that everyone, including policymakers, is terrified of it makes it possible to head off," said Chris Calderwood, chief economist at Jardine Flemings.

Comparisons to the debacle of 70 years ago are nonetheless falling more frequently from commentators' lips these days.

"There are disturbing parallels between what's happening now and what happened at the start of the 1930s that may signify we're dealing with powerful forces that we don't understand and can't control," wrote Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson recently.

Mutterings of a potentialglobal depression are also being heard more often in the financial community.

"I think the `D-word' is in circulation. Polite conversation is lurching in that direction," Calderwood said.

Highest on the list of factors pessimists fear could trigger a 1930s rerun is a persistent global share price slide which batters confidence and corporate profits and causes banks to sharply curtail credit.

"There has been a cataclysmic global move to cash. Individual investors and institutions are dumping equities out of concern for medium-term growth rates," said Schroders Japan economist Andrew Shipley. "I can think of a number of things that could trigger a crisis. By no means should people be complacent."

Even some who see possible parallels to the 1930s, however, caution against glib comparisons to the worst economic disaster of the industrial era.

The five years from 1929 to 1933 saw a leap in world unemployment rates and slumping prices and incomes, which fed into a deflationary spiral, a loss of a quarterof global output, a rise in protectionism that sent international trade spiraling downwards, and a huge contraction in money supply.

The United States suffered a 30 per cent fall in real gross national product, a 25 per cent decline in prices from their cyclical peak, and a contraction of money supply by one-third due to successive waves of bank failures.

At present, economists say the chances of a global dip into recession are mounting, though a decline is not yet a sure bet.

Much of Asia is already mired in depression, with some of the hardest-hit regional economies such as Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea forecast by some economists to see a double-digit decline in domestic demand this year. Unemployment is at 20-year highs in almost every country in the region.

Japan, by far the region's biggest economy, is caught in a recessionary bind.