Investors fled Wall Street again, driven by worries about the stability of the nation’s big banks and General Motors Corp.
Stocks ended at 12-year lows, more than wiping out a one-day rally Wednesday. Investors wrestled with more disheartening economic data, new concerns about GM and ongoing uncertainty about the financial system. Short selling ahead of the government’s Friday employment report exacerbated the losses, slashing 281 points from the Dow Jones industrials and sending all the major indexes down more than 4 percent.
Stocks fell in every industry, with the beleaguered banking sector posting some of the steepest losses. Citigroup Inc., still shaky despite receiving billions in government aid, at times sank below $1 and finished down 10 percent at $1.02. General Motors, meanwhile, ended with a loss of 15 percent at $1.86 as it warned of possible bankruptcy.
The S&P 500 lost 4.3 percent to 682.55. The Dow Jones Industrial Average decreased 281.40 points, or 4.1 percent, to 6,594.44. Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index fell 3.6 percent to 161.59. Treasuries rallied, driving the yield on 10-year notes down to 2.82 percent from 2.97 percent, and the U.S. dollar index climbed 0.6 percent.
(Sources: Yahoo Business News / Bloomberg News)
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Hey Mr. President. I couldn’t help noticing that your wife made the cover of a very popular magazine today. Does that matter more than what come out of your mouth at news conferences? Yoo Hoo, Mr. President, where are you?
Hey Mr. President, where are you going to get the revenue that is needed for all of these earmarks in your budget. HEEEELLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOO??????!!!!!!
#1 – You should be a little more respectful.
The earmarks are the Congress’s idea. Note the many articles in YWN on the earmarks we want.
He will print the money for the budget. Under Keynesian theory that will re-ignite the economy. If the theory is wrong and the real problems are more serious (loss of a banking system, change in people’s attitudes towards money), it might not even be inflationary (since the amount of money that haas disappeared is vastly greater)
All the revenue expected by the threatened Obama tax hikes on the wealthy has been dwarfed by country’s losses in the market. So quite a foolish plan it was. But we learned that the single most important trait for leadership is the ability to admit error. A stubborn administration can cause a nation to wallow in the quagmire for years.
Go F’bush Bubby!
Sorry akuperma but your obama ran saying that he wouldnt sign anything with pork. He told us the Porkulus Bill had no pork. He said he would go thru the bills “line by line” and cross out the pork. He clearly is NOT Muslim because it would be impossible to believe any muslim would enjoy so much pork!
Flatbush Bubby: why are you attacking our president again, have you no respect! also give him a chance!
well gee then. WHy should we ever worry about any recesion? Just print more money and hand it out?
WHy do there exist poor countries?
Why did people need to stand in line in RUssia for toilet paper?
Can’t government just print more money?
Obviously Keynesian theory has a limited use and can only go so far. Oh, and don’t forget the New Deal + hoover’s spending policies that created a great depression up until WW2.
And of course this the whole thing is a sham when one considers that no one in congress even read the bill which was rammed down their throats by the president who was afterwards able to wait afew days to sign this dire emergency bill.
this is called – demagoguery 101. seems some YWN readers are in the trance.
akuperma, you keep saying “print money” again and again and you are really annoying. Don’t you know that the greatest printing of money went on during the Bush years? That was how we had the ridiculously low interest rates (that are now coming back) and ever rising commodity prices. The M3 (which is a sophisticated measurement of the money supply) went up by a staggering amount and so did real estate and commodities, but it was a fake number. We are seeing the effects of that cash pumping coming back to bite us now, aren’t we? Money supply shrinks, so commodities take a hit, real estate tanks. In short, all the places where the conjured money was used is where it is coming out of now.
Bush printed the money to pay for his Iraq war. Now we are printing it in hopes of avoiding deflation. But after we reinflate, we will face the exact same problems as we did before.
We need a more sophisticated fix than Keynes. I’m sorry, but financial systems of the 1930’s relative to today’s were very very immature and much more easily manipulated. People will respond to incentives but not in the way you decide they should. You are foolish for claiming that printing money is a way to pay for a budget, yet you do so repeatedly.