Job losses hit Wall St, Dow ends down 147, Nasdaq 8

U.S. stocks were hit with more bad news Friday, adding weight to the view the United States is heading for a recession.

The Labor department reported a loss of 63,000 jobs in the economy last month, far worse than expected, and well ahead of the 22,000 jobs lost in January.

At the close of trading the Dow Jones Industrials were down 146.70 points or 1.22% at 11,893.69.

The Nasdaq Composite was off only modestly, down 8.01 points or 36% at 2,212.49.

The Standard and Poor's 500 was down 10.97 points or 0.84% at 1,293.37.

The White House, confronting a falling economy, loss of confidence in financial markets, tumbling stock prices, and a collapsing dollar, was conceding an economic "slowdown," but taking issue with the term, "recession."

"This quarter's going to be a difficult quarter for the U.S. economy. We are in a low growth period in the economy," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

"Recession is a technical term," he said. "Regardless of what you call it, we are clearly in a period of a slowdown in economic growth."

"The question isn't what do you call it, the important thing is what are you doing about it? And we have been aggressively dealing with the slowdown with the stimulus package," the White House spokesman said.

Meantime the global equity market gloom continued with London's FTSE 100 losing another 1.15% Friday. The German DAX closed 1.17% lighter, and the Swiss SMI 1.32%. The Paris-based CAC 40 fell 1.26%.

In Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 3.27%. The Shanghai Composite lost 1.37%. The Australian All Ordinaries was down 2.95%. The Hong Kong Hang Seng shed 3.60%, while the Indian bourse, the BSE 30 fell 3.42%.

The U.S. dollar fell sharply in European trading breaking through crucial levels in European currencies and the Japanese yen.

Around the close in New York the rout had stabilized. The euro was quoted at 1.5346, the yen at 102.80, and the British pound at 2.0143. The Swiss franc was changing hands at 1.0252. The Australian dollar fell to .9277, and the Canadian dollar to .9892.