The stock market fell today by the greatest percentage since February 2009 and by the most points since October 2008 -- the Dow dropping by more than 500. Stocks have been in funk for the past several days, a funk worthy of 2009. Partly it's that the world keeps getting bad news from Asia and Europe and the U.S. On a smaller level, the U.S. issues the jobs report for July tomorrow morning, and that's got some people nervous.
In ordinary times, stocks go up and stocks go down, and you can't pay too much attention to what happens in any given day. But we seem to have left the old ordinary for a new one. "Today there's more stability, but we seem to have stabilized into an era of high unemployment, low growth and endless risk. Rather than recovering from the crisis, it is almost as if we have settled into it," Ezra Klein writes in a marquee post. "And no one quite knows how we’re going to escape."
Below, today's Volatility Index, or VIX, also known as Wall Street's fear index.
