Wall Street hit by renewed bank, mortgage jitters

Wall Street sustained a fresh bruising in the past week as renewed concerns over the financial health of major banks and two large mortgage-financing firms shook investor confidence.
The main market indexes have entered "bear market" territory with a drop of more than 20 percent from their peaks amid a lingering housing market slump, a credit crunch and rocketing world oil prices.
Fears about the financial stability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two companies which help prop up the vast US mortgage market, sparked a heavy selloff of the companies' shares and dented wider market sentiment.
The leading Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 1.7 percent to 11,100.54 in the week to Friday.
The tech-rich Nasdaq lost a much slighter 0.3 percent for the week to 2,239.08 while the broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 index shed 1.9 percent to 1,239.49.
"This time, credit concerns came in the heavyweight variety, as investors were spooked by talk that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may need a bailout by Washington," Douglas Porter, an economist at BMO Capital Markets, said in a briefing note.