Bushonomics: US stocks swing sharply in early trading

Specialist Justin Bohan holds his head as he works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, on 9 October 2008.

8 October 2008
By JOE BEL BRUNO

NEW YORK -Stock prices swung sharply in early trading Friday as investors again dumped stocks but also scooped up shares that have been devastated by more than a week of intense and panicked selling. The Dow Jones industrials, down nearly 700 points in the opening minutes of trading, recovered to a loss of just over 125 and then headed lower again.

Frozen credit markets and a loss of confidence in the world's financial system have caused the Dow to drop 21 percent in just 10 trading days. The blue chip index tumbled 678 points Thursday, and is heading to its worst weekly point drop, and one of its biggest weekly percentage drops, since being created 112 years ago.

Friday's gyrations were likely caused the computer-driven "buy" orders that kicked in when prices had fallen far enough to make some stocks look like attractive bets. But that buying reflected no lifting of the market's deep despair, and selling continued.

"Momentum is running against the market and you don't want to get hit by a train," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank. "This is now about market psychology. There's extreme fear and panic out there."

At the start of Friday's session, losses for the year totaled a staggering $8.3 trillion, as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index, which tracks 5,000 U.S.-based companies representing almost all stocks traded in the U.S.

A stream of selling forced exchanges in Austria, Russia and Indonesia to suspend trading, and those that remained opened were hammered. The rout in Australian markets caused traders there to call it "Black Friday."

European stocks sank, with Britain's FTSE-100 down 8.09 percent, German's DAX down 9.4 percent, and France's CAC-40 down 9.7 percent. In Asia, the collapse of Japan's Yamato Life Insurance caused already nervous investors to pull even more money out of the market — the Nikkei 225 fell 9.6 percent.

The Dow fell 242 points to the 8,336 level. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was off 2.87 percent, while the Nasdaq composite index was down 1.16 percent.

Video: Will the stock market crash?

Commentary:
As to the question of the stock market crashing, the answer is yes and at anytime, as to the focus of where it stands in the current situation; for it has all the earmarks of an historical repeat of "Black Tuesday 1929. "

What is making some people to have extreme anxiety is not just the stock market coming extremely close to crashing or the current personal economic problems, it is felt it is the fact some economist have commented this coming economic depression will make the 1930’s Great Depression; seem like a sunny day walk in the park.

Police: Dad confesses to holding daughter captive 24 years

A photo taken by a forensic team and released by the Austrian police with permission of Austria's prosecution office on Monday, April 28, 2008 shows a view into a hidden room in a house in Amstetten, Austria, in which a woman is believed to have been held captive for 24 years. Austria's police on Monday, April 28, 2008 questioned a man identified in a police statement as Josef F., they say held his daughter captive for 24 years and sexually abused her in what stunned Austrians dubbed a 'house of horrors' in Amstetten, a high-tech, windowless cell where she allegedly gave birth to at least six children. Two police forensics teams arrived on the scene Monday morning and technicians in white suits entered the apartment block in Amstetten, a blue-collar town about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Vienna. (AP Photo/Police Niederoesterreich)

28 April 2008

By VERONIKA OLEKSYN and WILLIAM J. KOLE

AMSTETTEN, Austria -A man has confessed to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in windowless cell with a soundproofed door and fathering seven children with her, police said Monday.

The man, now 73, also told investigators that he tossed the body of one of the children in an incinerator when the infant died shortly after birth, said Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs.

"We are being confronted with an unfathomable crime," Interior Minister Guenther Platter said.

The daughter, who is now 42, had been missing since 1984 and was found by police in the town of Amstetten on Saturday evening after police received a tip.

Police on Monday released several photos showing parts of the cramped basement cell, with a small bathroom and a narrow passageway leading to a tiny bedroom. Investigators said an electronic keyless-entry system apparently kept the daughter from escaping from the cell, which was constructed of solid reinforced concrete.

The suspect, identified as Josef F., was expected to appear in court later in the day.

"He admitted that he locked his daughter, who was 18 at the time, in the cellar, that he repeatedly had sex with her, and that he is the father of her seven children," Polzer told The Associated Press.

Austrians — still scandalized by a 2006 case involving a young woman who was kidnapped and imprisoned in a basement cell outside Vienna for more than eight years — expressed disbelief at the latest case.

"The entire nation must ask itself just what is fundamentally going wrong," the newspaper Der Standard said Monday in a commentary.

Guenter Pramreiter, who owns a bakery just down the street, told The Associated Press that the suspect and his wife would regularly buy bread and rolls, though never in large quantities.

"They appeared normal, just like any other family," Pramreiter said. "I'm totally shocked, this was next door. It's terrible."