Free Republic

The Dow fell more than 400 points Tuesday morning, turning negative for the year, as US Treasury yields surged to their highest levels in over a decade. The Dow fell 427 points, or 1.3%. The benchmark S&P 500 declined 1.5% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.8%, extending the late summer selloff in stocks. Stocks have marched higher for most of this year, as artificial intelligence excitement took hold on Wall Street and powered tech stocks to stratospheric heights. But that rally petered out in August, as strong economic data had investors worried that a resilient economy and piping hot labor...

Employers spooked by a sputtering economy hit the brakes on hiring last month, postponing the upswing needed to put 14 million unemployed Americans back to work. The government's snapshot of the labor market showed the U.S. added only 54,000 jobs in May, the fewest since September. With employment gains failing to keep up with a growing population and people re-entering the work force, the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.1%, from 9% in April. The disappointing figures sent stocks tumbling, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 97.29 points, or 0.79%, to 12151.26. The Dow has now fallen for five...

President-elect Barack Obama warned yesterday that the nation is sliding into the deepest economic crisis since World War II and urged Congress to pass a stimulus package quickly or risk an entire generation of Americans losing any hope of prosperity. "For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs. More families will lose their savings. More dreams will be deferred and denied," he told an audience at George Mason University in Fairfax County. "And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able...

FOR YEARS, AS the economy has boomed, the permabears have said recession is just around the corner. They've been wrong. Now there's a little bit of evidence of an economic slowdown, and those same bears are declaring victory — they're saying the recession is right here, right now. We shouldn't be too surprised at a bit of a slowdown here. After all, despite the housing downturn, 2007 was a high-growth year by and large. It wouldn't be out of pattern to have to give back a little for a couple quarters just in the normal cycle of things. And with...