The Dow closed below 8,000 for the first time in five years today, dropping 427.47 points to 7,990. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was 6.1 percent lower, and the NASDAQ was down 6.5 percent. Shares of beleaguered lender Citigroup fell 23.4 percent. “It’s painful,” Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s, tells the Times. “A lot of people have pulled a lot of cash out. They’re sitting on the side. It’s all I hear all day: ‘Where can I hide?’” According to The Wall Street Journal, the day puts “an exclamation point on an idea that … had only been whispered around trading floors and offices. Nothing is working.” [NYT, WSJ]
