Follow Yahoo!'s The Daily Ticker on Facebook here!

After a string of Republican presidential debates, Saturday night's showdown at Drake University in Iowa shaping up to be the most lively and heated of them all. And we're not just saying that because Yahoo!, along with ABC, is a co-sponsor of the event; rather, because the stakes are higher than ever for all the candidates.

With less than one month to go until primary season begins in Iowa on January 3, 2012, Newt Gingrich has surged to a double-digit lead over Mitt Romney, according to a recent Gallup national poll of likely voters. Gingrich leads Romney 37% to 22%. Ron Paul trails in third with 8% of the vote, followed by Rick Perry with just 7%.

"On the debate stage Saturday night, you are going to look for the first Gringrich-Romney battle of the season," says Yahoo! Washington Bureau Chief David Chalian. "I think you are going to see these candidates come to present their closing arguments and I don't think they are going to be

Follow Yahoo!'s The Daily Ticker on Facebook here!

Update: U.S. stocks fell Thursday and European bourses sold off after the European Central Bank failed to live up to the most-bullish expectations for dramatic action. The Dow slid more than 200 points while the S&P and Nasdaq each declined over 2% as traders shifted out of "risk" assets such as stocks and commodities and fled to the safety of Treasuries, which rallied sharply.

Earlier: The ECB cut rates by 25 basis points (vs. hopes for 50) and, more critically, President Mario Draghi poured cold water on hopes the central bank would be begin buying EU sovereign debt or lend money to the IMF.

Such expectations were always "overblown," according to Zanny Minton Beddoes, economics editor at The Economist. "My suspicion is the ECB will never say 'we're going to stand as the lender of last resort'" -- something many observers had hoped for at today's meeting.

That said, the ECB did cut rates and announced "a lot of bold unconventional