Market losses continue

Friday capped a seven-day streak of market losses, making for Wall Street's worst week ever.

The Dow Jones industrials fell 696 points shortly after the market opened. But when the dust settled, the index finished the day with a decidedly more muted loss of just 128 points. That gave the blue chips an eight-day loss of just under 2,400.

Financial experts have dickered over whether the nation is or isn't in a recession, but economist Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics says we're already there.

"Give me a break - unemployment in California has gone up 2.2 percentage points in a year," Thornberg said Thursday. "That's a recession. In the end, the economy is made up of people. And unemployment is the primary measure that defines a recession."

But there may be some hope - and I place heavy emphasis on "some." Here's more from the AP:

There were signs Friday that some investors might believe the market was at or near a bottom. Just one day earlier, selling accelerated in the last hour of trading, giving the Dow a loss of 678 points, as many market players fled, while Friday, many people were clearly buying. And the Russell 2000 index, which tracks the movements of smaller company stocks, had a 4.66 percent gain Friday; small-cap stocks are often first on investors' shopping lists when they think a market turnaround is at hand.

"Nobody wants to miss the bottom," said Anton Schutz, president of Mendon Capital Advisors in Rochester, N.Y., who said of the Dow's performance, "I view it as a victory that we only finished down 100."