As stocks dive, more problems may lie ahead

It was the worst one-day fall on Wall Street since those dark days of 2008. It was driven by fear of another recession and worry over whether Spain or Italy will have to be bailed out.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 512 points or just over 4.3 percent Thursday.

But look at the longer trend. Just last April, the Dow hit this year's high at 12,810. Since then, it's fallen 1,427 points.

Today's decline wiped out all of the gains the Dow had made for 2011. In the broader market, the NASDAQ and the S&P were both off today either side of 5 percent. CBS News correspondent Rebecca Jarvis takes a look at what happened.

A stock sell-off that started in Europe spread to the U.S. markets today.

Stocks have been under severe pressure for more than a week. The Dow and S&P 500 have both dropped more than 10 percent from their highs earlier this year. That puts U.S. stocks solidly into market correction territory.

Veteran floor trader Art Cashin warns more trouble is brewing across the Atlantic as skittish European banks and investors look to cash out of American companies.

Dow plunges 513 points; Worst fall since 2008

"There's a old saying on Wall Street," he said, "that when you can't sell what you want to sell, you sell whatever you can, including your grandmother's necklace.

"So I think some of the people in Europe are having a difficult time raising the kind of capital they were hoping to get and looking at whatever assets in the U.S. and selling here."

Fears that Italy and Spain cannot overcome their mounting debt problems led to huge market losses across Europe. England, Germany and France all closed down. The anxiety is doing nothing to calm worries of a double-dip recession in the U.S. and perhaps even another global financial crisis.

"With the economies of world not in robust recovery at the moment, said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC, "the worry is that a slow-down in Europe drags entire globe down again."

And it wasn't just stocks -- oil and gold also dropped as investors rushed to cash.

[MagnavoxRocks]

Props lami987 - dead on. Clinton left the US and the world itself hope and prosperity and it only took the conservatives 8 Bush Jr years to destroy that and the world economy itself.

Yet now these right wingers condemn Obama for not being able to reverse this damage in a few short years. If you've been pushed (or should I say Bushed) in front of a bus it'll take years or even decades to recover - if at all.

The Republicans (plus their Conservative Party partners in Canada, Australia and the UK) along with their Tea Party extremist faction appear to want to do nothing less than destroy everything decent in the world. They need to be stopped.

[lami987]

Spending cut means job cut. So companies are preparing for hard time ahead when very few people can afford their products. Government must spend to create jobs during hard times and save during good times. Our government is now doing exactly the opposite. We never save either. We had a good opportunity to save after Clinton left office. He balanced the budget and had a big surplus. But Bush Jr. spent away the balanced budget, surplus and then some on tax cuts. We almost instantly restarted our borrow and spend policies of the Reagan years. We were able to rebuild Europe and the world after WW II when our top tax rate was 70% or more. Today our top earners are paying at a lower tax rates than many middle income Americans. American law makers should be ashamed of themselves when one of the richest Americans, Warren Buffetts, said his tax rate was lower than that of his receptionist. Today we couldn't even rebuild ourselves much less other countries.

[Jhihmoac]

Gonna be a bleak Christmas this year...

[documemts]

It's the big "W". Double-dip anyone?