da: The Wall Street Journal
Worries about Europe’s financial stability sent markets sharply lower Tuesday, rattling U.S. investors and sinking the euro to a one-year low against the dollar.
Spanish shares fared badly on the day, with Madrid’s blue-chip IBEX 35 index losing 5.4% to close at 9859.1 and top bank Banco Santander down more than 7%.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 Index dropped 2.9%, while Italy’s FTSE MIB shed 4.7% and Greece’s ASE index slid 6.7%. U.K. losses were more modest, but the slide by the FTSE-100 index pushed it into the red for the year. In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrials dropped 2%.
As the markets swooned, Greek civil servants staged the first day of a two-day strike, providing an early gauge of public sentiment on the Greece bailout—and austerity measures imposed by euro-zone countries and the International Monetary Fund in exchange for aid.
Tuesday’s strike came as the government submitted to Parliament a plan to raise taxes and cut pensions and public-sector wages. The government plans €30 billion in austerity measures, a condition for the bailout. The full effect of the strike won’t be clear until Wednesday, when the action becomes a general strike designed to paralyze the country.
“Just when you think everything with Greece is solved, you see protests over the…