Bad reports give Dow its second-worst day of year

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

NEW YORK (AP) - Relentlessly gloomy reports about the health of the world economy rocked Wall Street on Thursday, stirring more worry about the stalled recovery and sending the stock market to its second-worst decline this year.

The bad economic reports kept piling up: Manufacturing slumped in China. A closely watched unemployment figure jumped to its highest level in nine months. Sales of previously owned homes fell. Then came word of a sharp contraction in Northeast manufacturing, the worst since last August.

Suddenly, the outlook turned so bad that a Goldman Sachs analyst told clients to place bets against the stock market.

"The news has been horrible out there," said Uri Landesman, president of Platinum Partners. "The U.S. economy is slowing down. And China's growth is definitely under question."


Read more: By MATTHEW CRAFT

---

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, June 21, 2012 in New York. A quiet start on Wall Street quickly turned into a rout Thursday as the bad news piled up including the Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve reporting a sharp contraction in manufacturing in the Northeast, the worst since August 2011. The Dow Jones industrial plunged 251 points, the second-biggest drop this year. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

[Warpy]

1. The dollar also went up

and I've noticed that foreign investors take their profits when that happens. Dollar up, market down, dollar down, market up.

It was likely a combination of several things.

Still, equities are the only place to be if you want a return on your investment instead of just paper profits on the face price. Interest rates are remaining dismal unless you're a small time borrower who has to pay them to a bank.

The whole thing is going to continue to be a total mess while they continue choking off the demand side.

[msongs]

2. speculators care nothing except turning a buck nt

[AdHocSolver]

3. Money only helps the economy when it is spent.

When money is hoarded, that is, money is removed from circulation, then the economy stalls.

Contrary to what the wealthy want you to believe, taking money from the 99 percent and giving it to the 1 percent is guaranteed to contract the world's economy.

When demand is reduced, which happens when people lose their incomes, then there is no incentive to expand production. In fact, businesses will reduce their costs in the quickest manner possible which is to lay off workers.

This is standard business practice and if the powers that be really wanted to revive the economy, they would push their puppets in government to spend money to create jobs, instead of pushing so-called austerity measures that will contract economies.

We can only conclude that the goal of the corporate wealthy is to collapse the global economy.

[jakeXT]

4. PPT asleep at the wheel yesterday, up 80 today /nt

[Evasporque]

5. So Facebook IPO did not save us....nt

[Amonester]

6. "to place bets against the market"

I bet the ca$ino owners want another bailout. Then another. And another.

Over and over again.

Until this planet becomes a desert.