Wall Street stocks tumbled Tuesday by the most since President Barack Obama's inauguration last month, as investors were skeptical that an overhaul of the government's financial rescue plan will be enough to stabilize the system, dpa reported.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday promised to bring the "full force of government to bear" on a new effort to revive the financial industry, injecting up to 2 trillion dollars into the system through a combination of new government lending and private investment.
Among the measures announced were a public-private partnership to buy up troubled mortgage-related assets, an expansion of a Federal Reserve programme to boost lending to consumers, and more injections of capital into struggling banks.
Geithner admitted he had laid out only the "broad architecture" of a financial rescue plan and would fill in the specifics over the coming weeks.
"Everybody is disappointed in the lack of details," Diane Garnick, an investment strategist at Invesco Ltd, told Bloomberg News.
Shares of Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc dropped more than 15 per cent. Financial shares as a whole lost 11 per cent on average.
The US Senate meanwhile passed an 838-billion-dollar stimulus package to help revive the wider economy. The legislation must be reconciled over the next few days with a separate, 819-billion-dollar version approved by the House of Representatives last month.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 381.99 points, or 4.62 per cent, to 7,888.88. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index tumbled 42.73 points, or 4.91 per cent, to 827.16. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index plunged 66.83 points, or 4.2 per cent, to 1,524.73.
The US dollar climbed against the euro to 77.53 euro cents from 76.97 euro cents on Monday. But the dollar fell against the Japanese currency to 90.34 yen from 91.47 yen on Monday.
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