CNNMoney.com
Companies Economy International Corrections Pre-market Trading After-hours Trading Winners/Losers/Actives Bonds Currencies Commodities World Markets Money Magazine Real Estate Taxes Jobs Ask the Expert Money 101 Autos Mutual Funds The Help Desk Loan Center Best Places to Live Ask the Expert Ultimate Guide to Retirement Retirement Calculators Best Funds Best Places to Retire Fortune Brainstorm Tech Apple 2.0 Blog Big Tech Blog Sectors and Stocks Tech Talk Resource Guide Small Business Makeovers Questions & Answers Small Business Video 100 Best Places to Launch FSB 100 Fortune Small Business Fortune 500 Brainstorm Tech Investing Management C-Suite Rankings Main Create Portfolio Edit Portfolio Create Alerts Edit Alerts
5 of 33
BACKNEXT
Wednesday, Sept. 17 - Another free fall
Wednesday, Sept. 17 - Another free fall
An employee exits the American International Group building in New York on Wednesday after the government bailed out the insurance company.
Investors gave an enormous thumbs-down to the AIG news, sending stocks plummeting, while traders piled funds into safer havens. Gold rose $70, a new record. Oil rose $6, its second-largest jump ever. And the yield on the three-month Treasury sank to 0.02%, the lowest level since 1940.

The Dow dropped 450 points by the end of the day, dragged down by bank stocks in a tail-spin. Despite reporting better-than-expected results, Goldman Sachs shares dipped below $100 a share for the first time since 2005. Morgan Stanley took a tumble as well, as rumors circulated that it would merge with troubled bank Wachovia.

Many Wall Street analysts blamed the stock market's collapses on so-called "naked" short sellers, who short stocks without ever buying the security. Subsequently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stepped in and banned naked short selling.

NEXT: Thursday, Sept. 18 - The bailout
Last updated September 14 2009: 2:19 PM ET
Email | Print | Share  |  RSS
 
google my aol my msn my yahoo! netvibes
Paste this link into your favorite RSS desktop reader
See all CNNMoney.com RSS FEEDS (close)
More Galleries
Women of power Shot during the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, these portraits showcase some of the world's most influential leaders. Photographs by Robyn Twomey. More
Better digs, less money These 6 businesses took advantage of crashed real estate prices to trade up for new stores and office space. More
Heroes of the Economy: Where are they now? In March, CNNMoney profiled people making personal sacrifices to help others during the recession. Did their efforts pay off? CNNMoney checks in. More

Special Offer
© 2009 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2009 BigCharts.com Inc. All rights reserved. Please see our Terms of Use.
MarketWatch, the MarketWatch logo, and BigCharts are registered trademarks of MarketWatch, Inc.
Intraday data provided by Interactive Data Real-Time Services and subject to the Terms of Use.
Intraday data is at least 20-minutes delayed. All times are ET.
Historical, current end-of-day data, and splits data provided by Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data.
Fundamental data provided by Morningstar, Inc..
SEC Filings data provided by Edgar Online Inc..
Earnings data provided by FactSet CallStreet, LLC.