By Rand Paul
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
Stocks hit a big milestone, then promptly spun off the road.
Stocks meandered between small gains and losses Monday, cooling off after a rally that had pushed the Standard & Poor's 500 index above 1,500 for the first time since December 2007.
Stock indexes closed lower Thursday, a third straight decline, after U.S. retailers issued weak forecasts for earnings and more people filed claims for unemployment benefits.
The stock market is finishing its worst day since the financial crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 500 points Thursday. Investors are concerned that the U.S. economy will enter another recession and that Europe's debt problems are not closed to being solved.
Financial markets were jolted for a third day Wednesday by fears that a partial meltdown may have occurred at a nuclear plant in Japan. Stocks erased nearly all of their gains for the year.
"Most of the companies seem to be coming in ahead of earnings expectations, but the thing that's still problematic is the revenue line," said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Wealth Management. "To me it's just symptomatic of the global economy continuing to sputter along."
"It started to look like things in the market are maybe getting a little ahead of themselves, compared to some of the data we've seen," said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Asset Management Group.
