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U.S. stocks sank in afternoon trading Monday, with bank stocks leading the way down. The Dow Jones industrial average finished the trading session with a loss of around 100 points.
Stocks opened higher Monday but soon fell after an hour of trading. Cautious comments from the head of the European Central bank soured any hopes the ECB would find a resolution to Europe's debt crisis anytime soon.
Shares of Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America fell.
"If Europe is going to be bring us down it's going to come through the financial firms," said J.J. Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist at TD Ameritrade.
A report in The Wall Street Journal also said U.S. regulators will likely force U.S. banks to follow stricter rules to shore up their finances. The rules are aimed at keeping banks from failing but would pinch profits.
Mario Draghi, the ECB president, said that the central bank was looking for ways to keep the Eurozone's bailout fund effective even if credit rating agencies strip France of its AAA grade. The bailout fund depends on the top ratings of France, Germany and the countries that contribute to it. Draghi also restated his view that large-scale government bond purchases were outside the central bank's responsibility.
A gauge of sentiment among home builders inched up to its highest level since May 2010. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index added two points to 21 in December. Any reading below 50 still reflects a negative outlook.
Among companies making large moves Monday:
- Winn-Dixie soared. The supermarket chain is being sold to Bi-Lo LLC, another supermarket operator with stores in the southern U.S., in a deal valued at $560 million.
- Cablevision Systems Corp. rose after an analyst from Citibank said a recent drop in the company's stock seemed "way overdone." The stock has lost 27 percent from the end of October through last Friday following the unexpected resignation of its chief operating officer.
- Commercial Metals Co. fell. The company's board rejected a $1.7 billion takeover bid from investor Carl Icahn, saying the proposed deal undervalued the company.
The three major stock market indexes lost more than 2 percent last week amid worries that some European governments would try to drop the euro. Fitch Ratings warned Friday that it may cut the credit grades for Italy, Spain and four other countries that use the currency.
With two weeks of trading left in 2011, the S&P 500 is 3.5 percent below where it started the year. The Dow has managed to gain 2.2 percent in 2011, led by McDonald's Corp. and its 27 percent gain.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Time for the US of Accumulted debt to break out that bottle of Olde Chicken. It might not solve your problems. The Chicken might not even taste like liquor store high grade whiskey, but you'll forget about all that for a couple hours.
The time to fix today's problems were decaded ago. Banks have been lending to the wrong borrower for decades. Since 1980s loans to the businesses have contracted, and loans to the consumer has expanded. Business loans are used to create value. They contribute more to the real economy. The likely hood that they will be paid back is higher. But consumer loans do not provide value. Consumers consume. They do not produce. Today, banks are 98% invested in consumer loans. The collateral for consumer loans depreciate in time. They do not create value. This is the cause of bank troubles today. 50 years ago banks would be invested in pristine US government bonds. If that was the case now, a housing market crash would not effect the banks much. Alas, it is too late.
Google for "Kondratieff Wave 2012" to understand the economic reasons of Kondratieff Winter that is about to get harsher.
Hard to believe you're worried about the future of the banking cartels...they are one of the three major problem causers in the USA along with Corporate American profiteers and Wall Street manipulators...let's not leave out our corrupt governing system.
Again the hopes and dreams of our illustrious Wall Street investors have been snuffed out like a candle in the wind. One would think that after all this time they would stop listening to the endless banter from Europe. I mean really, there are more important things to consider, Berger King just changed their fries! Now that's worth a looksee!
...I've always said that closing the drive-thru window at McDonalds would provoke a revolution faster than the collapse of the economy...
The boys at Wall Street are doing just fine. We're the one's that are taking it in the shorts.
The United States is in line to get our country foreclosed upon, just like what’s happening to the European countries. The entire banking and financial system is corrupt and rigged.
I think most people have figured out that Wall Street is one of the most corrupt and ethically deprived institutions on our planet. I think most people also know the media is bought and sold just like most politicians. We also know that Wall Street is one of many tools of the elite but not the main tool. What is very clear is that our financial system has an architect and carefully designed plan that is playing itself out in Europe.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is very brazen in its fear mongering that we have lost a decade economically. Especially since the IMF has been one of the biggest contributors to perpetuating the instability of the European crisis. The dominoes are beginning to fall in what is an orchestrated attempt by the banksters to consolidate Europe and eventually the rest of the world’s economies under one umbrella that is to be controlled by those that have always controlled currency and money. The most egregious aspect of this contrived extortion is that they are blaming the people who are the backbone of any economy instead of their greedy corrupt political and business leaders.
George Papandreou was pressured to quit because he lapsed into a morally and ethical responsible position by trying to give the people of Greece a say in their economic future through a referendum. This vote would have given the Greek people the choice to stay in the Euro zone and allow their country to be foreclosed upon by the banksters or leave the Euro regain their sovereignty and coin their own currency once again. The IMF bullied the smallest country as a litmus test for what is going to be a much more challenging foreclosure process when it comes to the larger economies. Italy is now in the cross hairs. This dilemma you are watching unfold goes to the core of the rotten apple that is the world’s financial system.
Folks, you are witnessing the death throes of a desperate corrupt financial system where the stock markets and the fractional reserve banking system are at its core. The volatility in the stock markets are a microcosm of the greed, theft and corruption that has perpetrated all aspects of our and other countries economic systems. In the United States, It doesn’t matter who’s in office. Our political system has turned into a two headed one party system with both parties serving their masters, Wall Street and the banksters/Federal Reserve. The stock market is just another ponzi scheme whose intent is to fleece the gullible at the bottom of the pyramid. The stock market is a rogue element of a financial system that is meant to funnel the wealth to the elite/banksters who soicopathically control our financial lives. It is reaching a point where there is nothing anymore to take from the 99% of the world. The banksters would separate you from your rainy day fund if they could gain access to your shoe box or secret compartment in your purse or wallet. The stock market isn’t the main problem; it’s the fractional reserve banking system that has set the foundation for outright theft. We are experiencing the biggest bank and investment robbery in history and the banks and financial institutions are doing the robbing. When you blame one political party or another they have you right where they want you, in fear, divided and distracted to the theft that is going on right in front of your eyes each and every second of the day.
When you have people on Wall Street day trading and speculating making half a million dollars a year in their twenties betting on people being foreclosed on, you need to ask yourself what is the true purpose of our banking system? At the moment it is largely a theft on the American public. MF Global CEO, ex Goldman Sachs CEO Jim Corzine knows this and knows that nobody with his connections have served any time for stealing the investor’s money (1.2 billion at last count). The financial system’s main mission should be to allocate capital to areas of greatest growth in the real world economy. Yet they allow all kinds of broker speculation and financial gimmicks such as the derivative markets which are based on non-realistic side bets which are now in the quadrillions. The derivatives market was illegal for most of the 20th century.
The European banking crisis is a prime example of what is going to happen to all economies associated with stock market fraud and the Federal Reserve banking system. The financial strife in Greece is the model that will befall most countries. Greece is but a symptom of a cancer that has attached itself to the world’s economies. The Federal Reserve (which is neither federal nor a reserve) has been creating money (monopoly money) out of thin air and charging interest on it insuring a debtor economy for anyone who chooses or is forced to get involved with the Federal Reserve and their fractional reserve banking system. That is why this whole European or any countries current debt crisis will never be resolved and will be preyed upon by the stock market vultures. The Federal Reserve System is designed to cause economies to fail.
If someone loans you two dollars to run your economy and expects three back for the loan and interest how are you going to pay the third back? You can’t unless you borrow more dollars which puts you in perpetual debt and in a constant borrowing cycle to pay off the debt. This is designed not accidental.
Here’s the kicker, once the Federal Reserve/banksters have you struggling to pay off your interest, they send in their loan sharks the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF will loan you money to cover your ever burdening interest payments but they attach a provision that if you default, you will have to give them your assets in what they call privatization (foreclosure).
Since the interest is exponential, you will default and the banksters will come in and try to foreclose on your country, like Greece. They are being told to sell off their own country to pay back the people who caused the mess to begin with. This allows the elite to steal your intrinsic valuable assets because they gave you paper (loans/debt) and the interest on the debt that is systematically impossible to pay back. This also allows the parasitic stock speculators to profit from this designed theft. They not only know the outcome of an economy, they can gamble on the economic bubbles at the investor’s expense. This cancer goes all the way down the food chain.
In the United States case, it doesn’t have to be that way. In our constitution, in Article 1, Section 8, it stipulates that we can “coin money” as a nation and avoid the Federal Reserve’s interest (fee charged on loans) black hole.
So don’t be fooled that the Europeans have come to grips with their financial debt, it’s impossible, it’s a virus that has spread around the globe. The Europeans are now replacing their leaders with technocrats/ex Goldman Sachs banksters. These people haven’t been elected by anybody. The stock market vultures will continue to contrive “financial instruments” (credit default swaps/credit derivatives) to defraud the people of the world.
Banks, Central banks, World Bank, BIS, IMF = Federal Reserve = Debtor economies, Debtor Nations (economic slaves) and carrion for the stock market derivative heist.
Occupy the Fed all day all week!
Thou shalt not copy/paste
We have read and re-read those words over and over. Thanks. Now try wording in your own way, or if that is your way, a different way. If you have a point you are trying to make it might stick better if we feel you understand it well enough to re-word it, so we aren't eating the same old words leftover from yesterdays hash.
Plus it's a fun way to challenge yourself and see if your persuasive speech writing techniques are still sharp.
Have fun
There have been a lot of comments in opposition of OCCUPY Wall Street - but - there have not been any comments to JUSTIFY Wall Street ...
Wall Street and the big investment banks serve no useful purpose in our economy. New IPOs have almost disappeared and many of the new IPOs are foreign. Buying and selling 'old' stocks adds nothing to the health of the economy. Speculating does nothing but create inflation. Investment banks are supposed to serve the economy by providing start up loans for new business. Trading paper on Wall Street does nothing for the business community - the banks are only serving themselves.
BofA is just another dinosaur from the 'golden age' of capitalism. Extinction would be the natural evolution in this greed-based economy ...
Don't speak negatively of Wall Street, or you'll be told to take a shower and to quit asking for hand-outs.
Carl Icahn had already promised a sale to a russian consortium on the bid takeover, and now has to console the loss of the deal failing.
The russian consortium was miffed to say the least. Icahn should never try to sell something he doesn't own in the first place. He's an idiot.
Personally i hope the entire financial system falls like the USSR did. Its outdated, abused, currupt, full of greedy self servers and a burden to the rest of us who work for a living.
The only difference between the US and a Dictatorship is we have over 500 combined dictators not looking out for the people's best interest instead of 1. The checks and balances written into our constitution are slowly being erased or "amended". This country is teetering on the brink as it is. With no clear fix its time for a reset button.
Too many little bull$hit laws eat up the budget so truthfully the government will never have enough money to fix itself. It will never be able to live within a budget.
My family and I have 5 acres, we're ready to go backwards in time, however hard it may be, to start over again.
Burn baby, burn!
steal all the money you can you bastards. your cash cows are falling. that will be the best thing this county has seen since the fall of Hitler.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Where Is My Return to the Mean?
Much of the Western world has been conditioned to a “return
to the mean” paradigm for the past 60 years. Yes, there are recessions, but
they are temporary lulls in a prevailing growth dynamic. The growth trend has
been more or less inexorable. And we have become accustomed to it. Mainstream
economic thought and forecasting are based upon the “past performance” that
economic growth will resume. But lately that has not been the case. Economic
growth after the credit crisis has been decidedly lackluster.
That return to the mean has gone missing of late. The reason
is that we are coming to the end of the debt supercycle. Debt-fueled growth in
the “developed” world is coming to an end as the cost of debt rises and the
bond markets abandon one country after another, seemingly overnight. One minute
debt is easy, the next it is hard to get.
from howestreet dot com/2011/12/the-center-cannot-hold/
Eloquent . but irrelevant. The few have consolidated the wealth of the many while usurping the political power of the American people. Putting it in simlper form...we've been hoodwinked.
Not irrelevant at all. You are simply stating one of the reasons for the current situation, I was merely discussing the perceptions people have (expecting a return to the mean) and how they are still too deluded to perceive a system that is corrupt and works against them. However, there is nothing new to credit bubbles nor this situation - Roman and Greek writers often discussed growing inequity as either a symptom or cause of the downfall of empires and republics.
It is still debatable whether growing inequity is a main cause or just a symptom. Have these greedy people (who have always existed) simply taken advantage of an inevitable decline (like infection on a sick man), speeded it up, or did they cause it? There are many factors, imperialism, development in lower wage nations, to name just a few that would suggest it may not be as simple and black and white as you state.
Excellent. Can't wait to see Goldman's 4th quarter numbers. Hopefully they'll tank too. Let's just see how you like this new economy you shoved down our throats. Now it's your turn to suck a little wind. A few thousand layoffs wouldn't hurt either. Then you can join the real job market. China or McDonald's? Take your pick.
Well.. theres always wal-mart.. but i suppose part of that goes to china in the end.. meh.. lol, Mc'donalds, walmart or china..
Charge all of the TREASONOUS bankers/traders and politicians for destroying America!!!!
Not of surprising that many of these large banks who made bad loans without establishing the same rules I ahd to follow 30 years ago to get a loan. These people are supposed to know what they are doing . I know they were encouraged by loosening of regulations but common sense should have dictated not giving laons to people with little or no income. I am not sympathetic