Stocks traded sharply higher by midday Thursday as investors cheered upbeat news on jobless claims and economic growth and on optimism that Europe is taking steps to tackle its debt crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 181 points just before noon, or about 1.7 percent. The broader S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes were up too.
Stocks broke a three-day winning streak Wednesday on worries that Europe would not be able to contain its growing debt crisis. But Germany's parliament on Thursday approved an expansion of a euro-zone crisis fund, which helped dispel some of those concerns.
In U.S. economic news, jobless claims dropped sharply in the latest week, offering a glimmer of hope that layoffs were easing. And the government reported that economic growth expanded at a slightly faster pace than previously estimated in the second quarter, although still at a very sluggish rate.
The economic news came the morning after Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke said the persistently high unemployment rate, which has been above 9 percent for some time, is a "national crisis" and that the Fed would act to head off deflation (a combination of low growth and falling prices) if it should occur and the goverment should act to boost jobs.
"The unemployment situation we have, the job situation, is really a national crisis," Bernanke said.
In a question-and-answer period after a speech in Cleveland, he added that workers "are losing the skills they had, they are losing their connections, their attachment to the labor force," The Associated Press reported…
Find out more at http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/29/8037244-stocks-up-stongly-at-midday-on-europe-data
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