Trading Halted, Dow Plummets 9%, Now Under Barack Obama’s Last Day in Office
SPIRALING
Trading in U.S. financial markets was halted again Wednesday afternoon as stocks took another dive, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging nearly 2000 points as the Trump administration worked toward an economic plan to combat the coronavirus pandemic. By mid-afternoon, the S&P 500 was off 8.3 percent and the Nasdaq Composite down 7.4 percent All three are now in bear-market territory. After 1 p.m., regulators hit the brakes for 15 minutes as the Dow set off its triggers, and was down 9.2 percent, well under 19804.72—the level on the day President Barack Obama left office in 2017—as news came that several major U.S. automakers were shutting down production. The plummet comes after the White House said it was working toward a stimulus package that could reportedly top $1 trillion. The package would include funding to bail out industries and send cash to Americans in an attempt to stop the increasingly devastating effect of the coronavirus on the U.S. economy. “If 2008 was the Great Financial Crisis, this is the Great Virus Crisis,” Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s all at once a health crisis, financial crisis, and economic crisis. We need to fix the health part of it before we have it solved, but we can take financial and fiscal steps to blunt its effects. We are starting to do that now.”