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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (469)	6/23/2005 11:21:58 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24210

Stocks Wake Up to Nightmare By Nick Godt Markets Reporter 6/23/2005 4:59 PM EDT Stocks went into a tailspin Thursday as crude oil prices briefly spiked above $60 a barrel just as the dark clouds of a potential trade war with China -- fueled by a Chinese company's bid for Unocal (UCL:NYSE - news - research) -- weighed heavily on sentiment. The major stock indices, after trying to push unsuccessfully above this year's highs, went into a tailspin. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 166.49 points, or 1.57%, to 10,421.44; the S&P 500 dropped 13.15 points, or 1.08%, to 1200.73, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 21.37 points, or 1.02%, to 2070.66. Trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange was 2 billion shares, with decliners beating advancers by a 2-to-1 margin. Volume on the Nasdaq was 2.1 billion shares, with decliners outpacing advancers 2 to 1. After breaching an intraday record of $60.05, crude oil closed up $1.33 at $59.42 a barrel, surpassing its previous record close of $59.37. And just in time to remind the market of the impact of spiking oil prices, FedEx (FDX:NYSE - news - research) guided lower its first-quarter earnings forecasts. Likewise, companies such as Rite Aid (RAD:NYSE - news - research), Corinthian Colleges (COCO:Nasdaq - news - research) and ATI (ATYT:Nasdaq - news - research) fell sharply after posting disappointing results and/or guidance. As concerns over spiking oil prices mounted, a related drama began to unfold as Cnooc (CEO:NYSE - news - research), China's third-largest oil company, issued a bid for Unocal that topped an already-agreed-upon offer by Chevron (CVX:NYSE - news - research). The move reverberated from Wall Street to the halls of Congress, where Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary John Snow were trying to contain a rising tide of protectionism while again advocating that China drop its currency's peg to the dollar. The Unocal bid sparked furious debates: Can a Chinese company really buy a well-known U.S. company, especially one that peddles in oil, the very strategic commodity that both China and the U.S. crave more than anybody else Go to NEXT PAGE thestreet.com