Stocks Thud to Lower Close as Bailout Questioned |
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/us-stocks-end-sharply-lower/story.aspx?guid={D42C3BA8-E4C4-4A58-9435-4D47A857CF64}
Oil falls 2.5%, while dollar firms, dragging energy and materials stocks
By Kate Gibson, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) – Stocks on Tuesday wavered in and out of positive terrain with investors in limbo with further hearings Wednesday on the Bush administration’s $700 billion proposal to relieve banks of bad debt and bring back the troubled credit markets.
“Investors remain reluctant to stick their necks out too far, even as policy-makers meet to discuss the proposed bailout plan. A nagging fear of ‘what ifs’ is also weighing on sentiment,” said Frederic Ruffy, options strategist at WhatsTrading.com.
After triple digit rises and declines during the session, the Dow Jones Industrial Averages fell 161.51 points, or 1.5%, to end at 10,854.17, with all but three of it’s 30 components ending in the red.
In other news….
The WSJ reports that immigration levels have fallen 50% from last year’s level. Over the last several years, the U.S. had about one million immigrants come here annually, many of them illegally. The combination of high-profile law enforcement raids and the soft economy has discouraged many from coming here and has motivated upwards of 1.2 million already here to self-deport. One illegal immigrant said, “Why stay here when we don’t have papers and there is no work? We are thinking of going back after the first of the year.”
When ever we are tempted to get discouraged in the political process because our first pick, Mitt Romney, didn’t win the nomination, ask yourself this question: Where would we be today, if we had allowed the Washington elites to cram their amnesty bill down our throats in June, 2007? All these newly minted citizens would now be on welfare or collecting unemployment benefits or both. All of this would be going on in the midst of the worst credit crunch and Wall Street shakeout of our lifetimes. In addition to the trillion plus bailout of the gambling, er, I mean financial industry, we would now have millions of new entitlement clients lining up at government offices to collect their benefits.
I don’t know how everybody else feels, but I am very encouraged that political activism can work wonders when enough people get involved. IMHO, those of use who leaned hard on our elected Reps helped the U.S. dodge a bullet on this one.
One More Thing…..
THE HUNT FOR BLACK GOLD….CNBC Stocks Fox Maria Bartiromo will interview VP candidate Sarah Palin Wednesday, Sept. 24 at 9 PM ET/10 PM PT
Tags: CNBC, Maria Bartiromo