Stocks Up As Ugly Quarter Ends

(NEWSER) - Markets fell today after the Federal Reserve warned of a more prolonged recession than it previously expected, the Wall Street Journal reports. Financials and tech contributed to the plunge, which even a 6-month high in oil prices could not stop. “We’re just dealing with a stock market that was defying gravity,” a broker said. The Dow was off 52.81 to 8,422.04. The S&P fell 4.66 to 903.47. The Nasdaq lost 6.70, ending at 1,727.84. More»

Dow tumbles below 11K

(NEWSER) - Ben Bernanke didn’t give any sign that the Fed was about to take fresh action to prop up the economy in his speech at Jackson Hole today, sending stocks tumbling. Bernanke said the Fed “is prepared to employ its tools as appropriate to promote a stronger economic recovery,” but added that “the growth fundamentals of the United States do not appear to have been permanently altered,” according to the Wall Street Journal . More»

Falling futures mean we're not out of the woods

(NEWSER) - Global stocks were up early today following an uptick on Wall Street in the wake of the Fed's pledge to keep interest rates low. But it wasn't clear if the rebound would hold. Asia rates climbed and modest hikes marked Britain's FTSE 100 index (up .2%) and Germany's DAX (up .9%), though the CAC-40 in Paris was down .3%, and the the Euro Stoxx 50 index of euro zone blue chips opened higher but was down .4% by mid-morning. More»

Washington better get focused on jobs fast: Paul Krugman

(NEWSER) - For far too long, we’ve been preoccupied with “the wrong worries,” focusing on the deficit when we should have been working on job creation, writes Paul Krugman in the New York Times . Now we’re seeing the fallout from that misguidedness. “Those plunging interest rates and stock prices say that the markets aren’t worried about either US solvency or inflation. They’re worried about US lack of growth.” Unemployment ballooned between 2007 to 2009, and "you need a lot of job growth to make up the lost ground. And that just hasn’t happened,” Krugman notes. More»

Reform plans may hand regulation over to fervent deregulators

(NEWSER) - There's a lot riding on reform of the financial industry, but the administration's plans to overhaul financial regulation carries the seeds of its own destruction, writes Thomas Frank. Taking oversight away from the present confusing array of agencies and making the Federal Reserve One Big Regulator means that when the administration changes, regulation could end up in the deregulation-happy hands of someone like Alan Greenspan, Frank writes in the Wall Street Journal. More»