US ponders: How deep is economic abyss?

[OwnedByFerrets]

NEW YORK - For months, Americans have been subjected to a sort of economic water torture — a maddening drip of bad news about jobs, gas prices, sagging home values, creeping inflation, the slouching dollar and a stock market in bumpy descent.

Then came Bear Stearns. One of the five largest U.S. investment banks nearly collapsed in a single day before the government propped it up by backing emergency loans and a rival stepped in to buy it for a paltry $2 per share.

To the drumbeat of signs that seemed to foretell a traditional recession, this added a nightmarish specter — an old-style run on the bank, customers clamoring to pull their cash, a stately Wall Street firm brought to its knees.

The combination has forced the economy to the forefront of the national conversation in a way it has not been since the go-go 1990s, and for entirely opposite reasons.

More here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080323/ap_on_bi_ge/economy_on_the_edge;_ylt=AvI.WUJUqs6bTM_HfAu4_M2yBhIF

[leftofthedial]

1. ALL THE WAY

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