European stock markets dropped again Thursday as investors sold bank shares because of concerns about the sector’s exposure to indebted European governments.

Asian markets fell earlier in the day. U.S. stock futures were also lower, indicating a possible drop in share prices when the market opens. On Wednesday the U.S. markets saw another major sell-off, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down almost five percent.

U.S. President Barack Obama was due to travel to the Midwestern state of Michigan Thursday to tour a high-tech industrial facility and give a speech about encouraging innovating technologies to create domestic jobs.

Mr. Obama met with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on Wednesday to discuss how to reduce the huge U.S. budget deficit and how to respond to the euro zone debt crisis.

Global markets had rallied on Tuesday after the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, announced it would keep its key interest rate between zero and one-quarter of a percent until at least 2013. But new concerns about weak economic growth in the U.S. and reports that France might lose its top AAA credit rating wiped out those gains on Wednesday.