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 Dana Perino, White House spokesperson, speaking on the financial situation 

Stock markets around the world continued to fall dramatically today. This is following the ongoing events in the financial world, including the US Government's $700 billion bail out of the financial sector.

As of 18:00 UTC, the primary UK index, the FTSE 100, was one of the few indexes to increase in value. It went up by 0.16% (16.03 points), but stayed below 5000 mark at 4605.22. Some shares in this index, however, fared very poorly, with shares in HBOS falling by an incredible 41.54% to end the day on 94 points. 

The Dow Jones index continued to fall today, and, as of 18:00 UTC, it had fallen 260.77 points, or 2.62% to 9694.73, continuing its run below 10,000. Bank of America fared worse, with a fall of 17.38%.

The Nasdaq index also fell dramatically today, down 2.95% (54.97 points) to 1807.99 points. YRC Worldwide, Inc. was the biggest faller in this index, with its loss of 27.30% that took the company's share price down to 5.13.



Dana Perino, a spokesperson for the White House, commented today on the recent falls in the stock market that are described above. "One of the things that the President can do is to remind them what this rescue package would do. One of the most important things that it would do is to make sure that everybody knows that their bank deposit is safe, insured by the FDIC, and the legislation allowed for a temporary increase from $100,000 to $250,000. This reassures people that their bank accounts are safe, and that's an important message," she stated, trying to reassure citizens.

"But remember, with this rescue package, we asked the American people to do a really big thing and commit a lot of money in order to help prevent the credit freeze from affecting everybody lower on down the food chain. And to that extent, yes, the President thinks that it's important that they hear from the President of the United States about how he understands that nobody wanted to do this legislation, however, it was the right thing to do. And now that we've done it, the most important thing is that Treasury move in the most expeditious way possible, to be efficient and to be effective, to make sure that the plan will do what it's supposed to do and un-freeze these credit markets."