It was a tale of two cities today with joy in Washington and despair in the financial markets of New York. When George W. Bush left the White House, he took Wall Street’s free-lunch order forms with him and the panic is on.
The Dow lost 4 percent, the Nasdaq and Standard & Poor’s 500 index more than 5 as Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup fell to new lows.
While Barack Obama was saying “Without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control,” Wall Street was doing just that in expectation that the Henry Paulson billion-dollar giveaways would now be transformed with conditions, oversight and transparency.