{"id":572196,"date":"2010-05-20T11:04:34","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T15:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"tag:theatlantic.com,2010-05-20:mt-57015"},"modified":"2010-05-20T11:04:34","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T15:04:34","slug":"markets-sharply-off-in-early-trading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/572196","title":{"rendered":"Markets Sharply Off in Early Trading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I loathe those neat little summary headlines that purport to tell you why things sold off&#8211;&#8220;Dow Drops 100 points on unemployment worries&#8221; and so forth&#8211;as if the journalist surveyed all the millions of people who bought and sold stocks and found out why they did what they did.&nbsp; So any attempt to fully explain this morning&#8217;s ugly market behavior in terms of one factor or another is bound to be deeply flawed.<\/p>\n<p>I think what we <i>can<\/i> say is that the market is as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.&nbsp; And no wonder.&nbsp; Greeks are rioting again, casting serious doubts on the viability of this austerity plan. European leaders are still muttering about &#8220;wolfpacks&#8221; in the markets, which is usually the last refuge of desperate finance ministers taking unrealistic positions.&nbsp; The euro has &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/e461003a-63d1-11df-ad7c-00144feab49a.html\">relapsed<\/a>&#8220;, falling back towards $1.20.&nbsp; Jobless claims in the US rose unexpectedly last week<a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/economy-watch\/2010\/05\/new_weekly_jobless_claims_rise.html\"><\/a>, dampening the sense of forward momentum in the economy.&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2010\/05\/home-buyer-credit-expiration-sinks-mortgage-applications-by-27\/56962\/\">Mortgage applications are down<\/a>, which means the housing market may retreat from any tentative gains now that the tax credit has expired. Financial reform is moving towards passage &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/economy-watch\/2010\/05\/new_weekly_jobless_claims_rise.html\">with all the consistency and predictability of an old pickup with a busted clutch<\/a>.&#8221;&nbsp; And we seem to be hovering on the brink of deflation.<\/p>\n<p>All of this raises the possibility of the dread &#8220;double dip&#8221; recession.&nbsp;<br \/>\n Worse, that recession was expected to come (if it did) when fiscal and<br \/>\nmonetary stimulus were withdrawn&#8211;not when a peripheral member of the<br \/>\neurozone ran out of borrowed money.&nbsp; The parallels to the Great<br \/>\nDepression are not perfect . . . but they&#8217;re certainly uncomfortable.&nbsp;<br \/>\nAnd if we do double-dip now, there&#8217;s a good possibility that we&#8217;ll<br \/>\neventually triple-dip, because all that extra money does have to be<br \/>\nmopped off at some point.<\/p>\n<p>Which of these factors is driving the markets down so sharply?&nbsp; Frankly,<br \/>\n any of them would be enough to trigger at least a little selloff.&nbsp; At<br \/>\nthe moment, we seem to be in the middle of a highly imperfect storm.<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:e079478b468adf4bb6b51626bf0f08a0:%2FUX5zyqusaKvaXnqwooxvi46qXYb9%2Blvn7l%2FThRNTKDeZyhz3gPamen%2FuNnqCa7JRV%2B9ArUWQE7t'><img border='0' title='Email this Article' alt='Email this Article' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/emailthis.png'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:72ebe64a95c85636e2d0c2db81a418cf:xzIiTFz%2BKcEyJpK8tvIYBNCP4qBHOILcg8ww80o%2FFGT105hVj%2BQS%2FBeslQxy0w4BTsdEEgvOk8zp'><img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/digg.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; 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color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:185271a03e15b30991e9f1e0a63a1ea6:wz7BBeXHJlSFRT%2BbZI2pd8vcH91KH%2F0w0yhttFcxW6ISUD%2Bsk3eAzZqR3br%2BCKB52E7V09utXBuGSQ%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to StumbleUpon' alt='Add to StumbleUpon' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/stumbleit.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:6c9c41bc7bad77123cfc21c8039c9a73:52hqNODLJfcLWjdWe0gdb9q4yMHpL2o95DdUrCnZL%2BFNPZ%2BxII81cQ59uVJVkx%2F390m%2FY%2BlB39H1iQ%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/facebook.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=bbcf9259147d7d61ffb0d5f0fabc4687&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=bbcf9259147d7d61ffb0d5f0fabc4687&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=%22http:\/\/a.triggit.com\/px?u=pheedo&#038;rtv=TechBiz\n&#038;rtv=p29959&#038;rtv=f33822\"\/><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=%22http:\/\/pixel.quantserve.com\/pixel\/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.29959.rss.TechBiz\n.33822,cat.TechBiz\n.rss\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/AtlanticBusinessChannel\/~4\/HWc7K9Qtn_I\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I loathe those neat little summary headlines that purport to tell you why things sold off&#8211;&#8220;Dow Drops 100 points on unemployment worries&#8221; and so forth&#8211;as if the journalist surveyed all the millions of people who bought and sold stocks and found out why they did what they did.&nbsp; So any attempt to fully explain this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-572196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}