Entries for May 30, 2007

Just how vulnerable is the U.S. economy to troubles in China? It's a question I really started pondering after watching the 6.5 percent drop overnight in Chinese stocks in response to a government tripling of a tax on stock trading. Now Wall Street is sure reacting much better to the decline than it did back in February when the Shanghai Composite index fell 9 percent, sparking a 400-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average. This time, the Dow industrials were flattish in midday trading.