Cutbacks have taken place at Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse in the last few days alone as blood-letting gathers pace - and there were rumors Thursday of imminent layoffs at Merrill Lynch.

A study published Thursday by a Chicago employment consultancy, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, revealed that in the first nine months of the year, the U.S. financial industry shed 129,927 employees - compared with 34,903 over the same period in 2006 and 41,475 the year before that.

The consultancy's chief executive, John Challenger, warned that the pain was far from over: "The dominoes are likely to keep toppling as home values fall and foreclosures continue to climb. Even if the worst of the crisis is over, as some are saying, we could continue to see heavy job cuts in the financial sector through the end of the year."