The other day, I wrote about the warning of a slow slide in the global economy. Oppsssss…
Wall Street had for the most part shrugged off a recent slide in global stock markets, viewing the declines as an adjustment that was bound to take place after so many years of uninterrupted gains.
That complacent view was upended on Wednesday.
Waves of nervous selling rocked the stock market in the United States, following an earlier sell-off in Europe. With an hour of trading left on Wednesday, the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 1.75 percent, leaving it virtually unchanged for the year. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 1.6 percent, leaving it down about 3 percent for the year.
All 10 sectors of the S.&P. 500 were lower on Wednesday, led by financials. Shares of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America — which all reported solid, if unspectacular, earnings this week — were down more than 4 percent. Shares of Wells Fargo, which also reported third-quarter results, were down nearly 3 percent.
This goes back to a point I’ve made for a long time: until people get real wage increases and have real jobs, there will be no stability in the economy.
