New York, NY, United States (AHN) – U.S. stocks slumped on the open Thursday on continued worries about the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis. Investors shrugged off encouraging news on the unemployment front and sold into the previous two-day rally.

Just after 9:30 a.m. on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 107 points, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 11 points and the NASDAQ gave back 13 points.

Reports that private sector employment climbed 325,000 in December, and that the number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms fell 1.6 percent last month, its lowest level since June 2010, did little to buoy U.S. equities.

Weighing on markets was a less-than-impressive French debt offering, a falling euro, and a tepid German bond auction on Wednesday.

In U.S. corporate news, retailers Macy’s, Limited and Zumiez all posted solid same-store sales results and boosted their future earnings guidance higher.

Pepsi fell after reports that the soft drink maker is mulling cutting 4,000 employees and lowering pension contributions in an effort to raise earnings. Shares were trading lower by 32 cents to $66.41 per share.

Eastman Kodak continued to fall on reports the iconic company may be on the verge of filing bankruptcy. The firm has already been warned about possible delisting from the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of EK were last quoted at just 42 cents.

In commodities, gold was lower by $13.60 to $1,599 a troy ounce, silver was off 28 cents to $28.91 and oil was down 70 cents to $102.49 a barrel.

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New yorY, NY, United States (AHN) – Plummeting stocks welcomed investors in Wall Street on Tuesday morning after a long weekend amid speculation of a worsening debt crisis in Europe and a weakening United States economy.

Dow Jones dropped 239.61 points, or 2.13 percent, to 11,000.65. The Dow has been experiencing triple-digit losses in the past two trading days. S&P 500 dipped 25.14 points, or 2.14 percent, to 1,148.83, while NASDAQ struggled 45.72 points, 1.84 percent, to 2,434.61.

Banking stocks were badly hit on Tuesday’s opening: Citigroup was down 5.5 percent, Bank of America lost 5.4 percent and JPMorgan Chase fell 4.3 percent.

Steep losses in European bourses on Monday reached Wall Street triggered by worries on Europe’s capability to fix its debt crisis. Also, true recovery of the U.S. economy was in doubt as analysts expressed concern over a disappointing labor report on Friday that no new jobs were created in the country in August.

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While President Obama is confident that a divided Congress will support a debt-limit increase to cover mounting federal spending, Upstate congressmen, freshmen who are gaining traction in Washington, have different ideas.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – President Barack Obama is scheduled to undertake domestic travel in the coming week according to a White House communique.

Obama is planning to hold town hall meetings in “Northern Virginia, Palo Alto, California and Reno, Nevada to speak directly to the American people about his vision for reducing our debt and bringing down our deficit, based on the values of shared responsibility and shared prosperity,” the White House said.

On the return flight from Chicago on Friday, Jay Carney, presidential spokesman called Obama’s two urgent tasks as one to pursue Congress to immediately raise the ceiling on U.S. debt and the other to move with urgency towards deficit reduction.

On the first task, Carney said, “That shouldn’t be linked or held hostage to any other action because the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling — those consequences would be catastrophic to the American economy, to the global economy and to America’s creditworthiness internationally.”

About efforts towards deficit reduction, Carney said the president, “asked the Vice President to oversee and leaders of Congress to appoint members to participate in where they can come together and begin to negotiate areas where we can agree to bring about further deficit reduction in a balanced way that can achieve the kind of results that we think are what America needs economically and for our future.”

Citing both as “urgent … but … not linked,” Carney reiterated, “With regards to the debt ceiling, it cannot be linked or held hostage to something that wouldn’t pass — couldn’t reach consensus. It has to be done. All the leaders of Congress of both parties have said that, and we obviously share that sentiment.”

Carney hinted that the president was ready for compromise on his targets while negotiating with Republicans, saying, “He recognizes he’s not going to get 100 percent of what he wants or that it’s not going to be his way only, and Republicans need to recognize that, which is how we ended up with an agreement last week on the funding for the 2011 budget.”

Carney noted that the president Obama believed Congressman Paul Ryan of the budget committee “is absolutely sincere and that he believes that this is the right — that that’s the right path, the one he put forward is the right path for America.”

On the disagreement part, Carney said, “He (Obama) doesn’t think that it’s (Ryan’s budget proposal) balanced.”

Explaining the disparities, Carney said, “He doesn’t think that we need to — that the price of deficit reduction needs to be ending the guarantee, the health benefits that Medicare has provided our seniors, cutting energy — clean energy investment by 70 percent, cutting education by 25 percent, cutting infrastructure by 30 percent — and all so that we can not just reduce the deficit but so that we can extend tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans and give new tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”

With the count-down to 2012 presidential election ticking and Obama already an official candidate, the incumbent needs to sell his policies to voters who are not diehard rock star Obama fans.

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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, speaking on Tuesday warned Congress that it would be catastrophic if the national debt ceiling isn’t raised.

“The consequences of that would be catastrophic to the United States,” Geithner said appearing before the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The United States is expected to reach the current debt ceiling of $14.29 trillion by May 16, and the Obama administration has been seeking an increase in the debt limit.

“Default by the United States would precipitate a crisis worse than the one we just went through. I think it would make the crisis we went through look modest in comparison,” Geithner said in response to a question from Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL). “It would force us, of course, to cut payments to military – cut critical payments to our seniors and it would be a reckless irresponsible act to this country and I find inconceivable that the Congress would not act to increase the limit.”

“Of course that requires Congress to act in a timely matter to increase the limit. If we take more additional actions we face that – we run out of room on May 16th. There are a series of measures that my predecessors have used in the past that Congress has authorized that would give Congress a little bit more time, but those measures don’t buy us nearly as much time as they did in the past because our debt and deficits are so large now. So they will buy us an additional few weeks if Congress doesn’t act,” Geithner added.

Reiterating that not increasing the ceiling limit would be catastrophic, the Treasury Secretary said it would call into question the willingness of the government of the United States to meet its obligations. “It will shake the basic foundations of the entire global financial system. It is inconceivable that America would do that. I’m totally confident that Congress will act to avoid that, but, you know, again, to think about it in a direct sense what it does is it’ll raise dramatically the borrowing cost permanently for all Americans,” he said.

Every business for a very long period of time would raise a much higher cost of borrowing. Every family would raise a much higher cost of borrowing, unemployment will rise dramatically, thousands if not hundreds of thousands of business would fail and, would shake the confidence of the world in US financial assets and Treasuries, Geithner explained painting a grim picture. “It would be a deeply irresponsible act, inconceivable,” he noted.

Geithner said the Treasury is working on a corporate tax plan. “If you look at how the world views the United States today, the world investors are very confident that we’re going to solve this problem, but we have to earn that confidence. We have to justify that confidence and that requires us acting. And you’re right to emphasize it. I completely agree with you,” he said.

“I think it’s inevitable that Congress and the administration come together and reform comprehensively the US Tax Code, not just for individuals, but for corporations. You have a very compelling model for doing that in the commission’s proposal. A lot of merits on that basic approach which is to broaden the base and to use some of the savings from broadening the base to lower rates and lower future deficits,” the Treasury Secretary said.

The Treasury is designing a corporate tax reform that’s comprehensive, he said adding that it would lower the statuary corporate rate very substantially and pay for that by reducing or eliminating a set of special preferences for individual industries and activities in United States.

“We think that’s absolutely necessary to improve incentives for investment in the United States, and we’re hopeful that we’re going to be able to work with Congress on doing that,” he added.

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Lisbon, Portugal (AHN) – Ratings agency Moody’s has downgraded the credit worthiness of the Portuguese government for the second time in two weeks and warned further cuts might come.

Moody’s downgraded Portugal one bracket to a Baa1 rating from A3. Pushing Portugal’s long-term debt down toward junk bond status will make it more difficult and expensive for the country to borrow money, as it is a more risky investment now.

Uncertainty over Portugal’s government was cited by Moody’s. Among those were the possibility of debt restructuring, outstanding government debt and problems achieving deficit reduction, as well as the possibility the country might request a bailout.

This latest credit rating downgrade comes ahead a monetary policy meeting of the Governing Council of the European Central Council on Thursday.

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Dublin, Ireland, United Kingdom (AHN) – Aside from requiring an international bailout, another victim of Ireland’s financial woes is the sale of Irish tycoon Derek Quinlan’s Citigroup London tower. Quinlan and his joint venture partner Glenn Maud purchased the property in July 2007 from the Royal Bank of Scotland for $1.5 billion (GBP 1 billion).

Observers said the bailout of Dublin signals the crumbling of Ireland’s empire in London. Because of the financial woes faced by Irish companies with property loans totaling $118.4 billion (EUR 90 billion), the National Asset Management Agency set up by the Irish government in 2009 has started to collect business plans to determine the companies’ strategy for their loans.

About 69 percent of the loans are linked to non-income generating land and development assets. The objective of NAMA is to cut the loans by 25 percent over the next three years. About 30 percent of the properties being tracked by NAMA are in Britain.

The international bailout is also expected to impact British banks, which have large exposure to Ireland. Lloyds Banking Group is set to incur $6.45 billion (GBP 4.3 billion) in losses, according to the bank’s trading statement. Another British bank likely in the same predicament is the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Lloyds issued the statement hours after ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Ireland papers by five notches to three levels above junk status. Moody’s attributed the downgrade to increased uncertainty over Ireland’s outlook and the cost of rescuing its banking sector.

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South Korea says it plans to impose a levy on non-deposit foreign currency debt held by domestic and foreign banks in a bid to defend the country against surges of capital that could threaten its economy.

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