Friday February 20, 7:05 pm ET
Stocks tumble but close well off
lows
NEW YORK (AP) -- Despairing investors
keep unloading stocks -- and there are no signs that the selling will end anytime
soon. Wall Street tumbled again Friday,
giving the market a painful end to another terrible week, one that left the
major indexes down more than 6 percent. The reality of a protracted recession,
and the likelihood that government intervention can do little to hasten its
end, had investors again abandoning stocks, particularly those of struggling
financial companies. Friday's
drop, which shaved 100 points off the Dow Jones industrial average, was led by
financial stocks and came a day after the market's best-known indicator dropped
to its lowest level since the depths of the last bear market, in 2002. And the
Standard & Poor's 500 index, the barometer most closely watched by market
pros, came close to its lowest point in nearly 12 years.
Obama tries to halt talk of bank
nationalization
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House on
Friday insisted it's not trying to take over two ailing financial institutions,
even as stocks tumbled again.
On Wall Street, talk of nationalization
of Citigroup Inc., and Bank of America Corp., prompted investors to continue to
balk, worried that the government would have to take control and wipe out
shareholders in the process.
Investors have shown decreasing
confidence that U.S. banks can right themselves. Citigroup and Bank of America
have already received significant help from taxpayers as the government has
rushed in to try to save the financial sector, which has been choked by bad
assets and seen the flow of credit shrink.
The
speculation about the two banks' future continued to take a direct toll