“Signs of improvement in the credit markets brought a wave of relief to Wall Street on Monday, as investors sent shares higher after the open and welcomed comments from the chairman of the Federal Reserve that seemed to encourage a new government stimulus package,” reports the New York Times.
As the Dow plummeted nearly 700 points yesterday to fall well below the 9,000 mark, the Iraqi stock exchange - where this broker was merrily keeping up with her booming business - was flourishing, buoyed by four-year lows in violence and hopes of a reconstruction windfall, reports the New York Post.
The market is experience a volatile morning after the global markets experienced the same overnight.
Here are some links to stay up to speed on the market.
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Wall Street futures are down after the government reported that second-quarter economic growth was less robust than previously estimated, reports the AP.
The Commerce Department has reported that gross domestic product fell short of the 3.3 percent growth estimated a month ago.
Key lawmakers have reported an agreement in principle on a bailout of the financial industry designed to avert a deeper economic crisis, reports the AP.
Emerging from a two-hour negotiating session, Sen. Chris Dodd said, “We are very confident that we can act expeditiously.”
The White House has conceded on certain points of the $700 billion financial bailout plan by limiting the pay packages of Wall Street executives whose companies would benefit from the proposed bailout.
“The American people are angry about executive compensation and rightfully so,” Paulson told the House Financial Services Committee.
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. met with anger at today’s Senate Banking Committee where he tried to persuade Congress “to enact this bill quickly and cleanly, and avoid slowing it down with other provisions that are unrelated or don’t have broad support.”
But after hours of back-and-forth they rejected the administration’s plan. “What they have sent us is not acceptable,” the committee chairman, Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, told The Associated Press.
Today, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson urged Congress to pass a $700 billion financial bailout. They warned that letting problems persist would have dire consequences for the national economy, reports the AP.
“If financial conditions fail to improve for a protracted period, the implications for the broader economy could be quite adverse,” Bernanke says in his prepared for a panel being held later today.
It was a bad day again on the stock market as investors were unnerved by the governments plan to buy $700 billion in banks’ mortgage debt.
Stocks fell sharply, taking the Dow Jones industrials down more than 370 points.
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Democrats are pushing back on the bailout planoffered by the Bush Administration, specifically with legislation that would cut the salaries of the CEO’s whose firms participate in the bailout and by adding more oversight provisions, reports The Washington Post.
