MARKET JITTERS – AT 9:49 A.M. ET:  There are economic worries aplenty this morning.  The debt crisis in Europe gets worse and worse.  You may have noticed that Europe has difficulty solving grown-up problems.  Stocks are dramatically down on European exchanges.  Our own markets opened lower.  There is real foreboding that nothing is going in the right direction.  From Bloomberg:

U.S. stock futures tumbled, indicating the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index will extend last week’s decline, as speculation Germany is preparing for a Greek default spurred turmoil in global financial markets.

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) slumped at least 1.3 percent, following losses in European banks, and as Citigroup Inc. slashed its third-quarter profit estimates for the U.S. lenders. Caterpillar Inc. and Alcoa Inc. (AA), which are among companies most-dependent on economic growth, decreased more than 2.1 percent...

...“There’s so much anxiety among investors,” Richard Sichel, who oversees $1.6 billion as chief investment officer at Philadelphia Trust Co., said in a telephone interview. “There’s troubling news out of Europe. People are concerned that if Greece defaults, there could be a ripple effect. It’s fear of the unknown. There’s an abundance of bad news overseas. And in the U.S., the economic news has not really been enough to boost confidence.”

COMMENT:  The president presents his jobs bill to Congress today.  (Can you sense the excitement?)  It's unlikely to gain much traction in its original form.  There's a sense that time is wasting, and no real economic progress is being made.

September 12, 2011