Panic on Wall Street

More signs of economic weakness triggered a global sell-off in stocks Thursday. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 400 points in a return to the wild swings in the market last week.

In the United States, there were reports that more people joined the unemployment line last week than a week earlier, gasoline prices contributed to higher inflation and manufacturing slowed in the mid-Atlantic.

In Europe, bank stocks slid on worries about the region's debt problems. In Asia, Japan's exports fell for the fifth straight month.

The U.S. and European economies are "dangerously close to recession," Morgan Stanley economists wrote in a report. "It won't take much in the form of additional shocks to tip the balance."

[AP]