The possibility of imminent interest-rate rises worries many.
The volatility seems to have been started by technical factors rather than rising worries about state and municipal defaults.
Stocks closed slightly higher on Friday, after a sharp sell-off earlier in the week caused by rising worries about the impact of surging borrowing costs across Europe.
The findings address rising worries among some voters that immigrants arriving from Latin America in the last two decades have resisted learning English and are failing to assimilate into American society.
In a sign of the anxiety, the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, rose above 20 for the first time since July, suggesting rising worries, but ended down 0.4 percent as the stock market rebounded.
This week, despite rising worries about the street clashes, the cabinet backed Mr Samak's plan to hold the referendum.General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, the former army chief who led the 2006 coup, seems to have gone quietly into retirement.
The gloom comes despite signs the economy has been holding up recently during the rising worries — other data released Thursday showed a healthy gain in new-home sales and a slight drop in new jobless claims.
Finance ministers from seven of the world's biggest economies concluded a meeting in the Canadian Arctic on Saturday with pledges to maintain their fiscal stimulus programs, despite rising worries among investors about the mounting debts of some European governments.
A firm stance by the United States over its Okinawa bases coincided with rising worries in Japan about China's naval ambitions, further underlined this week by a fierce diplomatic spat over several uninhabited islands controlled by Japan but claimed by China.
Jennifer Capriati, the Australian Open champion in 2001 and 2002, confirmed yesterday that she would not play in Melbourne next week and there are rising worries that the women's event will also lose a big draw card, the world No2 Kim Clijsters.
