“Stocks plunged sharply Thursday, with the Dow down more than 500 points, in the biggest selloff since May 2010. All three major averages tumbled into negative territory for the year as investors were rattled over an intensifying global economic slowdown and ahead of the widely-followed monthly unemployment report.”
Click over to the Weasel Zippers blog for a photo that’s a portrait in anguish.
Suitably Flip writes that it’s the ninth largest drop in the Dow’s history.
Allahpundit quotes one analyst who dubs it a case of “Total Fear:”
U.S. markets were already sharply lower on widespread worries, including the weak job market. But the selling gained momentum as Japanese and European policymakers stepped in with dramatic measures to shore up their financial markets.
There’s “total fear” in the market, said Bob Doll, chief equity strategist at the world’s largest money manager, BlackRock.
All three major indexes tumbled more than 4% Thursday and erased all their gains for the year. The indexes have also pushed into ‘correction’ territory – defined as a 10% drop from their highs earlier this year. Over the past 10 days alone, the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq have dropped about 8%.
Great ready for Dow 5500 and unemployment double its current 9.2 percent national rate, I guess, as “we’re not even halfway there yet,” according to the president today:
“It’s been a long, tough journey. But we have made some incredible strides together. Yes, we have. But the thing that we all ought to remember is that as much as good as we have done, precisely because the challenges were so daunting, precisely because we we were inheriting so many challenges, that we’re not even halfway there yet. When I said ‘change we can believe in’ I didn’t say ‘change we can believe in tomorrow.’ Not change we can believe in next week. We knew this was going to take time because we’ve got this big, messy, tough democracy,” President Obama said at a campaign fundraiser in Chicago on Wednesday night.
Nobody’s surprised at this point that the president talks as if democracy is a bug, not a feature from his point of view, right?
Related: Roger L. Simon posits one modest short-term solution to the nation’s woes. Since it will likely fall on exceedingly deaf ears, here’s a more localized action plan.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member