Wall Street plunges on lending worries

Traders assemble at a post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, July 26, 2007. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Wall Street suffered its second-biggest plunge of the year on Thursday, sending global markets lower. Investors fled stocks amid increasing uneasiness about the mortgage and corporate lending markets.
The Dow Jones industrials fell more than 400 points, while Treasury yields plunged as investors moved money into bonds. The Dow's drop was the biggest since it plummeted 416 points on February 27 after a nearly 10 percent decline in Chinese stock markets.
The anxiety on Thursday increased after the Commerce Department reported that sales of new homes fell 6.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 834,000 units, more than triple what had been expected and the largest percentage drop since sales fell by 12.7 percent in January.