Now we know why he waited 3 days.
(DJI)
Obama spoke today. The Dow plummetted 634 points.
AP reported:
Stocks plunged Monday as anxiety overtook investors on the first trading day since Standard & Poor’s downgraded American debt.
The Dow Jones industrials fell 634.76 points. It was the sixth worst point decline for the Dow in the last 112 years and the worst one-day drop since December 2008. Every stock in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index declined Monday.
Investors worried about the slowing U.S. economy, escalating debt problems threatening Europe and the prospect that fear in the markets would reinforce itself, as it did during the financial crisis in the fall of 2008.
“`What’s rocking the market is a growth scare,” said Kathleen Gaffney, co-manager of the $20 billion Loomis Sayles bond fund. “The market is under a lot of stress that really has little to do with the downgrade.” Instead, Gaffney said, investors are focused on “how Europe and the U.S. are going to work their way out of a high debt burden” if economic growth remains slow.
Investors desperately looked for safe places to put their money and settled on U.S. government debt — even though it was the target of the downgrade Friday, when S&P removed the United States from its list of the lowest-risk countries.
Today was the 6th worst slide in history.
Glenn Reynolds explains how it could have been worse.
