Something that should get your attention:
Stocks dropped sharply as soon as trading opened today after a French bank, BNP Paribas, suspended operations of three of its funds in the wake of turmoil in the American market for home loans and the European Central Bank injected cash into the financial system because of tightening credit markets.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 200 points, or 1.5 percent, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Nasdaq composite index were down just as much. Shortly after 10 a.m., the Nasdaq had recovered much of its losses but the Dow remained down about 170 points.
The plunge came after a sell-off in Europe, which was prompted after BNP, the largest publicly traded bank in France, became the latest European lender to announce problems linked to the worsening credit market in the United States, where several large companies have already announced losses.
A German central bank meeting was under way to discuss details of a rescue package for the lender IKB, another victim of exposure to the crisis in subprime lending.
Jonathan Mullen, a spokesman for BNP, said that the credit squeeze in the United States had made it impossible to calculate the value of the underlying assets of the funds and that the bank was obliged by market conditions to halt holders of the funds from cashing out or new investors from buying shares in the funds.
Keep your eye on this.