The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 376 points on Monday, capping off a tumultuous week on Wall Street that some are calling the worst since1929. Investors nervous about the future of the market avoided assets tied directly to the U.S. government, while a minority who bet against a rise in oil prices was forced to liquidate their positions. The dollar also dropped sharply against the euro, a change that analysts attribute to growing international unease with the stability of the U.S. market.
Ehud Olmert officially resigned as prime minister of Israel on Sunday, ending two months of interim government after he announced his intention to step down. Olmert, who leaves office in the wake of numerous corruption scandals, hopes to hand over the position to the newly elected head of his Kadima party, Tzipi Livni, though key ministers in the Labor party object to her succession. Current polls suggest that two other candidates for prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, could potentially defeat Livni if a general election were held today.
The last two independent investment banks on Wall Street, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, announced their plans to restructure on Monday after investors concluded that their borrowing habits had become too risky. Both companies obtained permission from the Federal Reserve to become bank holders, a change which will limit their profit margins in exchange for insurance policies on their deposits. It will also place them in the same class as competitor Bank of America, which has remained relatively stable in the face of the recent crisis.
Fans of the New York Yankees bid farewell to their stadium on Sunday, when the team played their final home game against the Boston Red Sox in front of 54,000 fans. The closing, which brought together 21 Yankee greats and their family members, coincided with a last-ditch effort by the Yankees to make it into the playoffs. It also landed catcher Jose Molina a spot in history, as the last player to ever hit a home run in the stadium.
The 60th Annual Emmy Awards aired to the smallest audience in its history on Sunday, attracting only 12.3 million people to watch one of the biggest awards shows on television. The performance, which many critics panned as self-indulgent and dull, drew fire for its presentation of five reality-show hosts as the subjects of an unscripted ten-minute dialogue. The awards fared even worse than their 1990 and 2007 counterparts, which were each watched by slightly over 13 million viewers.
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