A wave of selling washed across the financial world Thursday, driving the stock market down, interest rates up, and bringing new tremors of concern that the forces that have been propping up growth are starting to fade away. The U.S. stock market closed Thursday down 2.5 percent following a 1.4 percent drop on Wednesday, but those moderate declines don’t capture the sense of fear that captured trading floors from Wall Street to London to Tokyo this week. The very underpinnings of a four-year bull market seemed to be coming unglued. An index of expected future market volatility soared 23 percent, to its highest level ... (full story)