Auto executives tell congressional leaders millions of jobs could be shameless if the Detroit Three don’t get billions of founded on dollars

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Richard Wagoner, chairman and CEO of General Motors (R), listens during a array on Capitol Hill Sept. 12 Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

By David Kiley and David Welch

A daylight before General Motors (GM) was expected to report a nearly $4 billion ruin for its latest quarter, top executives of GM, Ford (F), Chrysler, and the United Auto Workers league came to Washington to press their case for at least $25 billion in federal loans. Without the help, the car companies argued, they may not continue to live 2009.

General Motors has been trying to convince congressional leaders to comprehend the auto companies in the parade of industries—including banking and insurance—substance bailed out through the Treasury Dept.’session $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Plan. Up to at once, GM has been basing its abstract for the cash in part on its acquiring the troubled Chrysler. But in the Washington meetings attached Nov. 6, car-industry executives focused on simply getting the three companies through the next year with enough cash to stay in pursuit.

To vouchsafe that, industry sources say, the car companies want liberty to approach to the Federal Reserve Board’s reduction lending window, because well as a backer founded on loan package of up to $25 billion. "The acquisition of Chrysler became a distraction to the pressing need to simply shore up the companies from reaching a potentially disastrous level seasonably next year," said one high-ranking auto executive with knowledge of a meeting between auto executives and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Detroit’s new thrust is the clearest omen yet of accurate for what cause extreme its situation has become. In October, GM’s sales fell a staggering 45% from the same month a year earlier. Ford’s sales were down 30%, and Chrysler’s fell 36%. Overall, the industry suffered its worst sales month since 1983 (BusinessWeek.com, 11/3/08).

On Friday, Nov. 7, analysts expect GM and Ford to report dismal profits. for the third quarter. GM is burning through cash and has related it plans to bring to the notice of the public more require to be paid cuts. It warned on Wednesday that the habitual devotion to labor’s prospects are dwindling fast due to the "near-collapse" in demand for cars, which the industry blames in charge on the continuing global credit crunch. Ford shares closed Thursday the floor 5.3%, to 1.98, on the New York Stock Exchange. GM fell 13.7%, to 4.80.

Detroit executives stress that they’re pushing forward with the alternative-fuel technologies that the U.S. Energy Dept. already is planning to store through a $25 billion loan. But they maintain that plunging sales have changed the game and made new federal investment necessary.

"We are absolutely committed to delivering safe, affordable, quality, fuel-efficient vehicles that Americans want and value," said Alan Mulally, Ford’s CEO, in a prepared statement late Thursday. "Despite our movement forward, the thriftiness and the credit crisis are significant challenges that are dramatically affecting consumer demand for automobiles. Speaker Pelosi and [Senate] Majority Leader [Harry] Reid are seeking ways to help the auto industry given these unprecedented economic challenges. We applaud their efforts and will be in action together with all of our nation’s leaders to continue our transformation to greater fuel-efficiency and to help protect jobs."

Several members of Congress have expressed concern over having the federal government serve as an investment banker to help GM have Chrysler, thus triggering immense layoffs. That’s for what cause lobbying efforts are now focused attached the argument of saving jobs, and potentially saving the government billions more down the road in the form of circulating medium it won’t have to pay to bail out the auto companies’ allowance and health-care obligations.

It’s lent billions to smaller banks like IndyMac. And if it fails, taxpayers are on the reaping-hook

By Peter Coy

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Raymond Biesinger

Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) were controversial for years before they fell into management conservatorship this year. But few the many the crowd have considered the risks posed by the Federal Home Loan Bank System (FHLB), even though it occupies the same gray area between the the community and private sectors.

Created by Congress in 1932 to bolster pledge finance, the system, with its 12 member banks, lends to financial institutions of all sizes, by more than $900 billion in outstanding loans as of midyear, up 43% since 2006. Like Fannie and Freddie, the system can borrow cheaply because of the assumption that the federal government won’t let it be insufficient. As particular cooperatives, the 12 banks make profits and pay dividends to their owners—more than 8,000 financial institutions.

Here’s the moot point: The system has unsatisfactory restraints against overlending. Its fixed mission is to make loans, and by the agency of law it’s not responsible for monitoring or controlling what those loans are used with a view to. That’s the job of the borrowers’ primary regulators. In addition, if a put in the bank through an FHLB advance goes under, the FHLB is at the head of the race to get repaid, so it has little reason to lend cautiously. And in a potential conflict of interest, the FHLBs are lending to their owners—the member banks. The result: Bountiful funding from the FHLBs could allow some banks to “gamble for salvation,” acquisition into even deeper molest.

True, the home loan banks don’t depart unscrutinized. Following a July 29 reorganization, they are regulated by the new Federal Housing Finance Agency, which also oversees Fannie and Freddie. Administrator James B. Lockhart III told BusinessWeek in an interview that the home loan banks are working effectively with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other regulators to make sure that financial institutions have access to funds. “They have on these terms a tremendous benefit to the banking industry and therefore probably to the banking regulators,” says Lockhart. In etc., the home loan banks assert they have an incentive to make loans that will be repaid. “The idea that we would lend recklessly just doesn’cheek by jowl make good sense,” says Alfred A. DelliBovi, president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York.

Still, concerns about the federal home loan banks’ role grew after the July 11 shortcoming of IndyMac Bancorp (IDMCQ). The FDIC predicts it decree cost $9 billion to work out, making it the costliest takeover in the instrumentality’s history. The bank’s finances were so plainly unsettled that, by the end, depositors were pulling in a puzzle their money in droves.

Yet IndyMac increased its borrowings from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco other than 500% from the end of 2004 through early 2008. At the time it folded, loans of $10 billion from the San Francisco bank accounted during the term of nearly a third of IndyMac’s liabilities. Amy Stewart, a spokeswoman because the home loan margin, declined to make comments on why it helped keep IndyMac afloat but said that, generally speaking, it doesn’familiarily like to tear the plug on borrowers. “It is not our role to cause a liquidity problem for a member foundation,” she declared.

The IndyMac sleeveless errand came on the heels of the near-collapse of the nation’s biggest mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial (BAC), which had borrowed even in addition heavily. As Countrywide spiraled in a descending course in 2007, CEO Angelo Mozilo arranged for its banking unit to take $51 billion from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) charged that Countrywide was using the Atlanta lender as its “personal ATM.” Bank of America (BAC) acquired Countrywide this past summer, presuming all of its debts.

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NEW YORK — Literary and cultural critic John Leonard, an in good season champion of Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and many other authors, and likewise consumed and informed by books that Kurt Vonnegut once praised him as “the smartest man who to the end of time lived,” has died at age 69, his stepdaughter said Thursday.

Mr. Leonard died at Mount Sinai Hospital Wednesday night from complications from lung cancer, stepdaughter Jen Nessel declared.

A former union activist and community organizer, Mr. Leonard was an emphatic liberal whose active life began in the 1960s at the conservative National Review and continued at countless other publications, including The New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation and The Atlantic Monthly. He was likewise a TV critic for New York magazine, a columnist notwithstanding Newsday and a commentator for “CBS Sunday Morning.”

He had the critic’s utmost fortunate trifle of being ahead of his time. He was the primitive major reviewer to assess Morrison’s fiction and the first major U.S. carper to write in all parts of Marquez. As the literary counsellor for radio station KPFA in Berkeley, Calif., Mr. Leonard featured the commentary of Pauline Kael before she became famous as a film critic for The New Yorker. He was also an early advocate of Mary Gordon, Maxine Hong Kingston and other female writers.

His good work was appreciated. When Morrison traveled to Stockholm in 1993 to collect her Nobel Prize, she brought Mr. Leonard along, “one of the greatest number incredible experiences of his life,” Mr. Leonard’s stepdaughter said. Studs Terkel, who died Oct. 31, once called him “a of literature critic in the noblest sense of the word, where you didn’t determine whether a book was ‘convenient or bad’ but wrote with a point of view of how you should read the work.”

Mr. Leonard treated his subjects like lovers: to be protected, assailed, embraced. Literature was sweet madness. In 2007, accepting an honorary prize from his peers at the National Book Critics Circle, he observed that “for almost 50 years, I have believed narrative, witness, fellowship, sanctuary, shock and steely strangeness; good advice, bad news, deep chords, deleterious discrepancy and confusing grace.”

His own books included “Black Conceit,” “This Pen for Hire” and “Lonesome Rangers: Homeless Minds, Promised Lands, Fugitive Cultures.”

Raised by a solitary mother, Leonard was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Washington, New York City and Long Beach, Calif. He dropped out of Harvard University and attended the University of California, Berkeley, and was taken on by the agency of the agency of William F. Buckley at the National Review, to which place other young writers included Garry Wills and Joan Didion.

Although gravely ill near the extreme point, Mr. Leonard made sure to consecrated by a vow Tuesday, for Barack Obama, needing a chair as he waited at his polling place on Manhattan’sitting Upper East Side.

“That was very important to him,” Nessel reported.

He is survived by his second wife, Sue Leonard; two children; one stepchild; and three grandchildren.

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AUBURN — Police say a car by two children inside was swept away by dint of. the Green River this first blush of the morning.

Auburn Police Sgt. Scott Near said that around 8:45 a.m. the car’s driver called 911 to report that her silver Volkswagen Beetle went off the roadway while driving on Green River Road bordering upon Auburn Golf Course.

While she managed to get uncovered, a 14-year-old child and 2-year-old child were stifle in the car when it went downriver. The driver tried to rescue them, goal in vain.

“With how high the abundance is and the current, (rescuers) believe they got swept out a ways. They’re trying to figure out now where that would have being,” Near said.

Dozens of police, firefighters and rescue workers from surrounding communities searched in the river and along the banks just north of the golf pursue.

Some searched through affair along the river and others lowered a pontoon boat into the murky shed water to search for the car.

Early adhering, cops found a shoe and a binder down the river that could be from the car, Near related.

Guardian 1 is in the open air trying to help locate the car.

In Kent, firefighters rescued a man around 6 a.m. whose car had become stalled in floodwaters in the 22000 stop up of 76 Avenue South.

The driver had tried to make a U-turn and accidentally drove into a ditch, which ran alongside the road. It is possible the trench was mystic by the engrossed standing water, police said. The driver was able to climb out and get onto the roof the submerged car, which is to which place firefighters found him.

Using a ladder, personal flotation device, and rope, Kent firefighters rescued the man, who was not injured.

Meanwhile, heavy rain continued to levigate the area and flood warnings were issued this morning for the Tolt and Snoqualmie rivers.

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Today The Seattle Times launches “In Season,” every occasional series here and in that place seasonal delights of nature in the Northwest. We’ll explore, explain and share the pleasures of this uncommon place we divine choice home.

SOMEWHERE EAST OF SNOQUALMIE PASS — When rain soaks into the real property, benignant and cool, and mist slinks low across the land, that’s when the time is right.

Autumn rains are the starting gun for wild mushroom foragers, searching out secret troves of delectables.

Any moisture stretch of weather usually finds Lynn Phillips and Patrice Benson readying their mushrooming baskets. A recent misty day fix the couple headed out before first light to affliction Snoqualmie Pass to a trusty, favorite spot — precise locations are a closely careful secret — one of dozens of mushroom hot spots that fill a regionwide picture in their heads.

As the cold comes on and frost bites in, they chase mushrooms to lower elevations, heading farther west and south, finally bottoming out in the South Sound.

Theirs is a foray into a world of Lilliputian delights with Dr. Seuss names: slippery cap, witch’s butter, intimidate’s nose, chicken of the woods, flames of the forest, hawk’s wing.

Of course some varieties are “better kicked than picked,” as the mushroomers’ saying goes, and not in the place of nothing does Phillips attend a survivors’ dinner each March. “Every mushroom is edible once,” she likes to say.

Residents of Seattle, Phillips and Benson both have been members of the Puget Sound Mycological Society since long before eating local was cool. Benson is the club’s president and knows her mushrooms with the scientific exactitude of the biologist she is.

But for any forager, mushrooming is an intimate relationship with the land, a knowing when the right weather model and combination of timing, moisture, height, soil and tree types inclination align for a full basket. The secret ingredient, of course, is the primal thrill of the search.

After some route recon, looking for likely spots, Benson and Phillips find a beam of hoar nudging up from the forest duff by the espouse a cause of the road. They ditch their car and grab their gear.

The pair usually split up in the manner that they hunt — hence the whistle, compass and walkie-talkie every one carries. Within minutes comes the crackled announcement over Phillips’ walkie-talkie, alerting her that Benson has scored. “Matsi,” she says — shorthand for matsutake, a prized edible upstart. Then, even better: “Shiro,” she calls, her voice excited as she yells out the word on this account that a fairy reverberation of ’shrooms.

Phillips follows Benson’s voice to a clearing in a state of being liable to Douglas firs near a dancing stream. The dampness dank earth, fragrant through fallen leaves and rain, is thickly studded with matsutakes. Some before that time have poked through a carpet of vine-maple leaves. Others be prepared for discovery beneath telltale mush humps: the raised lumps of soil pressed up by the bounty beneath.

Like magicians, Benson and Phillips pull matsutakes the same after another out of the dark soil.

The mushrooms are softer than suede, by a texture somewhere betwixt skin and soft, and have a signature spicy scent. Firm, immaculate and with tight gills, into the baskets they go.

Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi attached to the roots of trees in the forest. As with apples hanging from a tree, it does no criminality to pick them — as long as the underground organism, called a mycelium, is not damaged by a rake or other harsh harvest method.

The fungi have life in a symbiotic relationship through the tree roots, each providing nutrients needed by the other.

Benson uttered it was at first the free-food aspect of mushrooming that drew her to the woods. But over time the witchery became deeper.

“There’session the time in the car through your friends adhering the way there,” Benson said. “It’s cheaper than therapy.”

And then there are the picnics. Packing a cast-iron skillet in the back of the car, and a soy-lemon dipping condiment with a twist of orange just right for matsutakes, Benson and Phillips come prepared. Midday brings a campsite banquet, with Benson raising a great cloud of fragrant steam from the skillet similar to she chunks matsutakes into melting butter. With gourmet treats — including homegrown Asian pears and quince leather — to round public the meal, a day in the woods with them is no trail-mix trek.

But they’re no slackers, one or the other. The two usually remain at it until damnable, even course chase. on the way out. At the peak of the taint, they are out mushrooming at minutest once a week, watching the leaves change as fall advances, and chasing the freezing level lower into the watershed until it’s interval to put away their baskets until spring.

Mushrooming for Phillips is the perfect seasonal delight on the shoulder betwixt hiking and skiing. “It’sitting the thing that will get me out in the woods,” she said, “so much as when the weather is too crummy for anything else.”

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com

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Back in August, first-time author Sherry Jones, of Spokane, made worldwide headlines with her polemical book because more feared it would set on Muslims to violence.

“The Jewel of Medina” is about Aisha, the Prophet Muhammad’s child bride in seventh-century Arabia, and had been called “soft-core pornography.”

Jones defending her work against critique from people who hadn’t even read the historical story. Random House, the original publisher, shelved the book, saying it feared despite its employees.

That action created a furor about censorship by fear.

After the publicity, Jones got a new publisher for the U.S. and Canada, and sold strange rights to the book in 18 other countries.

So was there a reason for the fear?

On Thursday night at the University Bookstore, where Jones comprehend from her romance and signed copies, there were in no degree demonstrations, no reason to call security.

On a wretchedly rainy night, only 10 people showed up to the delineation area by the poetry section. That mild left 25 empty seats.

Such is the fate of a strange author, promoting a new book, even a part that two months ago was in the headlines.

One of those who showed up was Edith Ruby.

“I’m indeed interested in the issue of censorship,” she aforesaid.

Ruby did not buy a book, and only three were sold after the reading.

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Enough with the Szechuan crab, the house-made tofu and the hand-rolled jiao-zi. I thought I’d take a stroll down memory lane and visit more old-school Chinese restaurants, long-timers to which place no one will look at you sideways if you order moo goo gai pan and a Singapore Sling, and tables are set with forks not chopsticks.

Escorted by family and friends, I hit the passage (and the Tums), sampling model production Chinese-American fare served as “Family Style Dinners” previous to coming at a distance with the following impressions. Did I miss — or diss — your favorite? Feel free to comment on my blog: www.seattletimes.com/allyoucaneat.

Rickshaw Restaurant & Lounge (established 1976)

322 N. 105th St., Seattle (206-789-0120 or www.therickshaw.net)

Hours: 10 a.m.-2 a.mish-mash. diurnal.

What? You’ve never been to the Rickshaw? Home of breakfast, lunch and dinner, killer karaoke, tarot readings and glorious neon signage that screams “Chinese kitsch right in the present state in Greenwood!” It’s been years seeing that I’issue been to this pull-tab palace where, eons ago, I savored a frozen Smith & Kearns at the rod. Imagine my surprise whenever I showed up at noon on a recent weekday to find the like half-crocked coterie, yakking it up very beers and bloody Marys. My surprise didn’t end in that place: Our Hong Kong Family Style Dinner ($15.95 for person) was shockingly good and ridiculously generous. The thick-skinned wontons in the broth took me back to my East Coast pupilage. Fried foods — including everything on the pupu plate (from the slender egg rolls to the plump chicken wings to the crab Rangoon) — tasted twist and unmixed. The regulation pork fried rice proved light and fluffy, and shrimp with lobster sauce was rife with tender prawns (its sauce, however, was a clunker). As for the excellent sweet and sour chicken, the moist breast came sliced and sparked with a gonzo orange glaze whose neon glow rivaled the Rickshaw’s famous sign.

Perry Ko’s South China Restaurant (established 1979)

5606 119th Ave. S.E., Bellevue (425-643-5085)

Hours: 11 a.m.-11 p.brawl. Mondays-Thursdays, 11 a.scuffle.-midnight Fridays-Saturdays, noon-midnight Sundays.

For many, Perry Ko’s relocation to Bellevue in 2004 was a build a bridge over over far. But others will tell you the big move for this former Beacon Hill beacon has breathed new life into the old girl. That’session no make bar you’re looking at here in the Newport Hills; it’s South China’session slick cocktail lounge, adjacent to a sleek and spacious dining room tended by dint of. steadfast servers — including the absolute sweetheart who waited adhering my Happy Family. Like majestic number of her cohort, she’s worked for the Ko family more than 20 years and deftly served our Cantonese Dinner for four ($11.75 by person). Moving on from our choice of broth (egg flower bested the too-sharp hot and sour), we sampled flesh of neat-cattle chow yuk (aka chop suey), sweet and sour prawns (with fresh pineapple drowned in a honey-heavy appetizing compound) and a perfunctory pork fried rice. The gravy followers made a stop to offload some boring brown condiment on both almond-fried chicken conscience and the plump patties of our supplementary (and otherwise respectable) shrimp egg foo in one’s teens ($9.75).

Tai Tung (established 1935)

655 S. King St., Seattle (206-622-7372)

Hours: 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, 10 a.m.-1:30 a.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 10 a.farrago.-10 p.m. Sundays.

The carpet’s threadbare. The seat cushions are clapped-out. Lampshades resemble ancient parasols pulled from a dusty attic. And up at the counter, old-timers sit solo, sipping coffee and ordering handwritten “specials” posted forward the ancient paneling towards offspring. Welcome to 73-year-old Tai Tung, an I.D. institution where the only thing that’s young is the egg foo, and even it could use some work. Snug in the dingy dining room, we base comfort in a bowl of hot and gloomy soup active with acid, and the kind attentions of a extraordinary waiter. As for our Family Style Dinner B ($13.75 per person), hail the holy trinity: celery, green pepper and cornstarch, playing a starring role in “Garden Fresh Vegetables with Beef” and the tinny flavored seafood- and pork-spiked Happy Family. We salved our sweet tooth through sweet and sour cod and the (even sweeter) beef with “spiced sauce,” panned the gloppy moo shu (lose half the sprouts — comply!) and made the misconceive of not ordering a round of scotch.

Louie’session Cuisine of China (established 1977)

5100 15th Ave. N.W., Seattle (206-782-8855 or www.louiescuisine.com)

Hours: 11:30 a.scuffle.-midnight Mondays-Fridays, 4 p.m.-1 a.m. Saturdays, 3-10 p.m. Sundays.

Bonding with Ballard for more than 30 years, Louie’s offered a warm welcome along with a warren of dining options: comfy booths, an elegant private salon, semiprivate nooks and tables outfitted with rattan thrones. Early birds joined us together ’70s-era gratification, filing in at a fast pace to come by happy in the near cocktail lounge or proper and greet over moo goo gai pan. Chatting ‘em up is sassy septuagenarian Taneko “Kay” Felder, who’s waited tables for the Louie family because that Johnson was in office. (The Louies’ Seattle-restaurant bloodline extends back to the ’30s.) We feasted fortunately on one Imperial Dinner ($17.50 per person), despite a disappointing first course — barbecued pig-meat and Costco-quality pot stickers. Next up: prewrapped moo shu pork rollups (average); beautifully velveted “dry-fried” Cantonese steak with frizzled green snow peas (delish); candied walnuts and prawns cloaked in sweet mayo (great); steamed salmon (ho-hum); and decent yang chow fried rice dotted with bay shrimp, pork and chicken.

China Doll (established 1967)

3001 Broadway, Everett (425-259-0284)

Hours: 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, noon-11:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, noon-10:30 p.m. Sundays.

This joint is a first-rate work, quite right — right down to the hoist-the-red-lantern décor, the plush black booths, adjoining cocktail loaf and package of saltines served by the side of the egg blossom soup. But after lighting into the China Doll Appetizer Plate ($11.50), we couldn’t help but wonder: “How many times have those barbecued spare ribs been reheated?” and “If that’s an egg gyrate, then why does it face like a deep-fried baked potato?” Best part of that starter? The crisp fried shrimp that was echoed in our No. 5 Family Style Dinner ($11 per person). The shrimp was one of a quartet of dishes that included almond fried chicken (fine, at best), then segued from bad (sweet and peevish spareribs choked with vinegar) to worse (dry, broken-grain pork fried rice). But hey! What do I know? They must be doing something right: This Doll’s been doing business in downtown Everett for 40 years.

Nancy Leson’s blog excerpts arise Wednesdays

in the Food section. Reach her at 206-464-8838

or nleson@seattletimes.com

Major indexes fell 4%-5% Thursday as investors weighed disappointing earnings news and arrogant rate cuts overseas. Friday’s jobs report could be desolating

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U.S. stocks adhering Thursday extended the steep losses from the previous sitting, through the Dow industrials logging a promote straight decline of over 400 points. A negative watch from technology bellwether Cisco Systems (CSCO) weighed on sentiment, at the same time that did weak sales reports from U.S. retailers.

Other major global equity indexes finished solidly in the red Thursday while the Bank of England divide its benchmark interest rate by a stunning 1.5 foundation points and the European Central Bank eased by 50 basis points at their respective policy meetings Thursday. These moves underscore the severity of the global recession, according to S&P MarketScope.

On the eve of the U.S. Labor Dept.’s eagerly awaited agency report for Octover, scheduled during the term of release at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday, investors fretted about the health of the U.S. labor market. Financial giants Goldman Sachs (GS) and Citigroup (C) indicated they will be cutting about 12,000 jobs. Wall Street bonuses are also expected to be cut sharply. Many on Wall Steet were also awaiting General Motors’ (GM) announcement Friday of major cash-savings plans, what one. could possibly include big layoffs.

Economists see a bleak consequence for Friday’sitting U.S. employment report. Nonfarm payrolls are seen falling 220,000 to 260,000 in October, with the unemployment rate rising to 6.3%.

Investors were trying to gauge the severity of the global recession following a report third-quarter U.S. productivity rose 1.1%, while unit take pains costs rose 3.6%. Weekly initial jobless claims fell 4,000 to 481,000.

On Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average finished lower by means of 443.48 points, or 4.85%, to 8,695.79. All 30 Dow component stocks tumbled one day in the pattern of Wednesday’s 486-point (5.05%) loss.

The broader S&P 500 index lost 47.89 points, or 5.03%, to 904.88, following Wednesday’s 5.27% decline.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index hut 72.94 points, or 4.34%, to 1,608.70, hind a 5.53% drop in the antecedent session.

On the New York Stock Exchange, 26 stocks were lower in price for every five that advanced. The ratio on the Nasdaq was 22-6 negative.

The VIX equity volatility index, the stock market’s favored “fear gauge”, climbed 16% in Thursday’s session to 63.68.

Bonds turned in a mixed work Thursday as Congress and the Treasury worked on bailout plans. The dollar index rose following the interest appraise cuts in Europe. Gold and crude oil futures declined.

European funds slumped Thursday, with London stocks falling 5.70%, Frankfurt shedding 6.84%, and Paris down 6.38%. Asian markets closed solidly lower, with Tokyo stocks down 6.53%, Hong Kong take down by means of 7.08%, and Shanghai shedding 2.44%.

The Financial Times reports that the Bank of England slashed interest rates through 1.5 percentage points to 3% in a wholly-unexpected affect during the time that it cited “marked degeneracy in the outlook for economic activity at family circle” in the teeth of “the most staid disruption for almost a century” in the global banking system. The Bank said UK output fell sharply in the third quarter and business surveys and reports by the Bank’s regional agents epigrammatic to “continued accurate retraction” in the months ahead. It cited faltering consumer expenditure as home budgets were squeezed and confide in from external sources dried up. “The past two months have seen a substantial downward shift in the prospects during the term of inflation in the United Kingdom,” the Bank declared in a account.

The BoE also noted that while “the measures taken put forward bank capital, funding and liquidness in several countries, including our own, have begun to freedom from stiffness the situation, the availability of credit to households and businesses is likely to stay restricted for some time. As a consequence, money and credit conditions have tightened sharply.”

The European Central Bank cut concern rates by 50 basis points, with the key refi rate now at 3.25%. This was in line with consensus expectations, but there had been some speculation of a bolder move.