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Wednesday, 05 March 2008 |
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By Ki Gray
 On February 14th, a manufactured day devoted to romantic love, Wall Street wasn't interested or feeling any good vibes: The Dow, as well as most of the other major stock markets around the world, finished down on recession fears. Why so spooked? For one, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke elected to announce that, despite recent encouraging news on the market floor, the sub-prime crisis has not remained contained as he had previously predicted, but had spread to other sectors of the economy, in particular consumer spending. The recent contraction in new jobs (a loss of 17,000, the first such loss since 2001, was reported for the last quarter of 2007), coupled with the deflated housing market, seemed a bit distant until the Fed's announcement. Fortunately, more rate cuts are sure to be on the way, but as news of rate cuts always implies that the economy is sicker than the average joe can tell, investors became more scared than reassured.
Another factor behind the Valentine's Day losses was the continued bad news out of Wall Street, with UBS reporting over $11 |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 05 March 2008 )
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