Stocks plunge worldwide — Dow’s 6th-worst loss

The stock mar­ket buck­led Mon­day under the weight of a cri­sis in Europe and dan­ger of reces­sion at home. Reel­ing from a down­grade of Amer­i­can debt, the Dow Jones indus­tri­als plunged 634 points. It was the worst day for the mar­ket since the finan­cial cri­sis in the fall of 2008 and extended Wall Street’s sud­den, sharp decline. Stocks have lost 15 per­cent of their value in just two and a half weeks.