Stocks tumble as bailout plan fails in House

Wall Street traders
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York City.
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

(AP) - Wall Street has ended a stunning session with a huge loss, with the Dow Jones industrials falling 770 points -- their largest point drop ever -- after the failure of the financial bailout plan in the House.

The decline for the day surpassed the 721-point previous record, on the day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, though in percentage terms it was well short of the drops on Black Monday of October 1987 and at the start of the Depression in 1929.

Stunned traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange watched on TV screens as the House voted down the plan. And they saw stock prices tumbling on their monitors.

The plan's failure means no one knows how the financial sector hobbled by hundreds of billions of dollars in bad mortgage bets will recover. The credit markets remain close to frozen as banks are too afraid to lend - including loans to other banks.

The Dow closed at 10,365.45, down 777.68 points or 6.98 percent.

The Nasdaq composite index fell 199.61 to 1983.73, and the Standard and Poors 500 closed at 1108.62, down 104.65.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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