Wall Street plunges on recession concerns, US budget deficit hits new record of $438 billion

Wall Street plunges on recession concerns

www.chinaview.cn 2008-10-08 04:23:35  

    NEW YORK, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) --

Wall Street plunged again Tuesday on recession concerns with all the major indexes sliding more than 5 percent.

    Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned in a speech Tuesday that the financial crisis could prolong the difficulty the economy is facing.

    Earlier, the Fed announced plans to buy massive amounts of corporate debt to jump-start lending in the markets where many companies turn for short-term loans called commercial paper.

    But investors remained worried about financial companies like Bank of America Corp., which fell after slashing its dividend and reporting that its third-quarter profit fell 68 percent.

    The Dow Jones industrial average fell 508.39, or 5.11 percent, to 9,447.11. The Standard & Poor's 500 index declined 60.66, or 5.74 percent, to 996.23, while the Nasdaq composite index fell 108.08, or 5.80 percent, to 1,754.88.

U.S. budget deficit hits new record of $438 bln

www.chinaview.cn 2008-10-08 06:47:47  

    WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) --

The U.S. federal budget deficit hit a new record of 483 billion dollars in the 2008 fiscal year which ended on Sept. 30, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated Tuesday.

    The new record of budget deficit followed last year's 162-billion-dollar red ink and exceeded the previous all-time high of 413 billion dollars set in 2004.

    With the economy in a slump, the CBO said Tuesday, revenues dropped by almost 2 percent in the just-completed fiscal year.

    Corporate income receipts posted a big decrease of nearly 18 percent, while individual income tax revenues declined by 1.6 percent, according to the nonpartisan CBO.

    The latest figures for 2008 are more than 30 billion dollars higher than the CBO's estimates issued last month and almost 50 billion dollars more than what the Bush administration predicted in July.

    In the last fiscal year, the federal deficit dropped by 34.4 percent to 162 billion dollars, a five-year low since an imbalance of 159 billion dollars in 2002, reflecting faster growth in government revenues than spending.

    The 2002 performance marked the first budget deficit after four consecutive years of budget surpluses.

    The Bush administration has projected early this year that the government could eliminate the deficit completely and return to a surplus by 2012.

    At present, however, many analysts predict that the budget deficit is likely to exceed 500 billion dollars next year as the government taps a large amount of money to deal with the most severe credit crisis in decades.

Editor: Yan