It has been another day of triple digit losses on Wall Street, with the fall of the Dow Jones Industrial average slowed only by a bit of reassuring news about the state of the U.S. economy from Central Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan. Still, the market ended up taking a beating.
Stocks plunged more than 200 points early in the day, then recovered somewhat, before tumbling again in the minutes before the final bell, to close down more than 160 points.
This, after Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, while strongly criticizing greed among corporate executives for a series of financial scandals, said the fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain strong. "And absent significant further adverse shocks," Mr. Greenspan said, "the U.S. economy is poised to resume a pattern of sustainable growth."
But this rosy economic outlook did little to reassure the market. Tuesday saw the seventh consecutive day of losses with analysts attributing the continued market slide to fears of more corporate scandals to come, and worries about upcoming second quarter corporate earnings reports.
Analysts like Scott Black of Boston's Delphi Management expects more market losses before buyers return and begin to outnumber sellers. Mr. Black said, "This is more akin to what we saw in the early 80's when the market had just a steady erosion until it bottomed out."
Helping to push the Dow lower were fears that the world's number one computer chip maker, Intel, was about to announce massive layoffs because of sluggish computer sales. In fact, just minutes after Wall Street ended trading, the Silicon Valley giant said it would cut its workforce by 4,000 jobs in light of sluggish second quarter profits - news likely to put more downward pressure on the markets when they open Wednesday.