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Log inCrude Oil Soars to Record High, Sending Stocks Plunging
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Crude Oil Soars to Record High, Sending Stocks Plunging
by Outspoken on Fri Jun 06, 2008 6:02 pm
Crude Oil Soars to Record High, Sending Stocks Plunging
By Jonathan Weisman and Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Oil jumped more than $10 a barrel today to a new record above $139, sending financial markets tumbling. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down nearly 400 points.
Further jolting the economic and political landscape just as the general election season begins, the nation's unemployment rate shot skyward last month to 5.5 percent, the biggest leap in more than two decades.
The jobless rate for the month was up 0.5 percentage point from April, the Labor Department said today, the largest swing in a single month since 1986. The number of jobs on employers' payrolls fell by 49,000, the fifth straight monthly decline for an economy that has shed 324,000 jobs this year.
Morgan Stanley analyst Ole Slorer predicted oil will reach $150 by Independence Day.
President Bush called on Congress to open more wilderness to oil drilling and to make permanent his first-term tax cuts, which expire in 2011.
Today's events are a combination of really nasty news for American consumers," said Andrew Tilton, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs.
"This is very startling," said John Silvia, chief economist of Wachovia Corp.
The cascade of bad news elicited swift responses from presumptive presidential nominees, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), and provided fresh evidence that despite recent signs of stability in financial markets, the U.S. economy is still reeling. For most of the past two months, the stock market has been rising and some measure of normalcy has returned to world markets. Economic data have been weak but not disastrous.
McCain and his Republican allies have been able to push the presidential campaign focus back to Iraq and national security, terrain they see as far more comfortable than economic turmoil.
Today's report, however, undermined a budding consensus that the economy was holding up. And it thrust the economy back to the forefront of the campaign.
"This is a reminder that working families continue to bear the brunt of the failed Bush economic policies that John McCain wants to continue for another four years," Obama said in a statement.
McCain fired back, "The wrong change for our country would be an economic agenda based upon the policies of the past that advocate higher taxes, bigger government, government-run health care and greater isolationism. To help families at this critical time, we cannot afford to go backward as Senator Obama advocates."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/06/AR2008060601470.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR
By Jonathan Weisman and Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Oil jumped more than $10 a barrel today to a new record above $139, sending financial markets tumbling. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down nearly 400 points.
Further jolting the economic and political landscape just as the general election season begins, the nation's unemployment rate shot skyward last month to 5.5 percent, the biggest leap in more than two decades.
The jobless rate for the month was up 0.5 percentage point from April, the Labor Department said today, the largest swing in a single month since 1986. The number of jobs on employers' payrolls fell by 49,000, the fifth straight monthly decline for an economy that has shed 324,000 jobs this year.
Morgan Stanley analyst Ole Slorer predicted oil will reach $150 by Independence Day.
President Bush called on Congress to open more wilderness to oil drilling and to make permanent his first-term tax cuts, which expire in 2011.
Today's events are a combination of really nasty news for American consumers," said Andrew Tilton, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs.
"This is very startling," said John Silvia, chief economist of Wachovia Corp.
The cascade of bad news elicited swift responses from presumptive presidential nominees, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), and provided fresh evidence that despite recent signs of stability in financial markets, the U.S. economy is still reeling. For most of the past two months, the stock market has been rising and some measure of normalcy has returned to world markets. Economic data have been weak but not disastrous.
McCain and his Republican allies have been able to push the presidential campaign focus back to Iraq and national security, terrain they see as far more comfortable than economic turmoil.
Today's report, however, undermined a budding consensus that the economy was holding up. And it thrust the economy back to the forefront of the campaign.
"This is a reminder that working families continue to bear the brunt of the failed Bush economic policies that John McCain wants to continue for another four years," Obama said in a statement.
McCain fired back, "The wrong change for our country would be an economic agenda based upon the policies of the past that advocate higher taxes, bigger government, government-run health care and greater isolationism. To help families at this critical time, we cannot afford to go backward as Senator Obama advocates."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/06/AR2008060601470.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR
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Plato (427-347 BC)
