At job fairs this summer from Denver to Colorado Springs, retired Army sergeant Thomas Maretich always bumps into the usual suspects and an all-too-familiar gaze of frustration — as if he’s staring into a mirror.

“I keep seeing the same people — mostly veterans — and I’m talking about captains, people with college degrees. They’ve been all over the world, have all kinds of experience. But it’s just the same guys over and over,” said Maretich, who in June earned a medical retirement from the Army.

“There are just a handful of jobs and thousands of veterans lined up for them. How are you supposed to get a job?” asked Maretich, a Colorado Springs resident with more than 20 years of Army experience. “Our veteran numbers are growing and jobs aren’t growing fast enough. It’s a real problem.”

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Yet amid the listless hiring rates of a slack economy, men and women with combat experience are being purposely ignored by some employers who fear they may have the symptoms of  post-traumatic stress disorder, thus making them — in their view — risky candidates, said John E. Pickens III, executive director of VeteransPlus.

“While it’s good that employers and general public understand (PTSD) issues, there may be some employers who know just enough to be reluctant, and who say: I want to hire this guy but I don’t want this guy having his war experiences affect his work,” Pickens said. His nonprofit has offered financial counseling to more than 150,000 current and former service members. 

“Some of the folks we talk to say they feel a little bit conspicuous. Employers are even reluctant to talk to them about their military experiences,” added Pickens, a former combat medic. “While eventually transitioning (into corporate jobs), their co-workers become aware that this is a veteran, and the veteran feels scrutinized to the point where it's like: ‘Are you OK?’ "

Through his consultations with veterans over myriad money issues, Pickens said he has learned that some have opted not to seek treatment for PTSD symptoms at Veterans Affairs hospitals exactly because “they don’t want to be labeled or stigmatized” in their civilian jobs — or while trying to land one.

Related: Opera about Iraq war reaches out to veterans
Related: Vets battle PTSD stigma -- even if they don't have it

“It’s like nobody wants to hire anybody with PTSD,” Maretich said. “It’s ridiculous. The whole thing got a bad name.”

On his final mission in Iraq on Aug. 27, 2009 — during his fourth tour in a war zone — sergeant first class Maretich was stationed as the gunner atop an Army vehicle. A car approached, driven by “a kid,” he recalled. After Maretich determined the vehicle was an imminent threat, he shot and killed the driver, he said. The car, loaded with an estimated 500 pounds of explosives, nonetheless detonated, causing Maretich to suffer a traumatic brain injury, sleep problems, chronic back pain and a knee that required replacement.

Related: 'Got Your 6' campaign helps vets return to civilian life

He also was diagnosed with PTSD — now, be believes, an unmentioned roadblock to his hopes for a corporate job due to its attached stigma.

The irony, he added, is that his duties in Iraq — including in operational intelligence and serving as a combat advisor to Iraqi soldiers — make him an ideal contender for a stateside job.

“I don’t think there is better job training anywhere,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that if I can get an Iraqi soldier to do what we’re training him to do — in a different language and a different culture — I can handle any kind of training job in America where the people speak the same language.”

Some companies, including New York-based financial giant Citi, have recognized that service members who have weathered combat carry unique talents into the boardroom. Last year, Citi hired 700 veterans and this year the company plans to hire at least 1,000 more, said Citi spokesman David Roskin.

Former U.S. Marine Chris Perkins has maneuvered from lethal hot spots in Iraq to a high-pressure job on Wall Street. He exited the Marine Corps in 2006 and immediately recognized, he said, the same talents that fuel success in Manhattan’s hard-charging financial district are not dissimilar from the skills that helped Perkins thrive while serving in Ar Ramadi, the capital of the Al Anbar Province.

Related: Mortgage woes afflict high rate of active troops, veterans

“My job over there was to make very timely and accurate, quantitative decisions with the understanding of risk and risk managements,” said Perkins, now managing director and global head of OTC derivatives intermediation and clearing for Citi. He recalled one frightening moment — delivering bicycles to an Iraqi school then being pinned down by insurgent gunfire five minutes later and about one block away.

Over time, 260 Marines were wounded within his battalion of 1,000 and 16 were killed in action.

“When I was able to navigate into the financial services sector, I asked: ‘Hey, you guys are traders, right? Isn’t that what you’re doing? Aren’t you making quantitative decisions all day long while understanding the risks you are taking?’

"The successful traders said, ‘Yes, that’s exactly we’re doing.’ So I was able to transfer my skills into that job,” said Perkins, who later founded the Citi Military Veterans Network and played a leading role in working with fellow veterans within the financial services industry to co-found Veterans on Wall Street.

Veterans who apply for corporate gigs should carry not a stigma, Perkins said, but a stamp of approval: they’re wired to work long hours with minimal sleep, start early, complete assigned tasks — all with a certain intensity and focus that only can be sharpened by battle experience.

But maybe too many hiring managers and human resources honchos “have just seen too many ‘Rambo’ movies,” Maretich speculated. “Maybe they think we’re all going to come back and not be productive.

“Believe me, man, if I could go out there and swing a hammer, I would. I can’t anymore. The one thing I can do is work in a corporate environment,” he added. “And the thing is, I’ve been really training to do that for years.

“In the civilian world, it’s not life and death. You’re not working 12 hours a day 7 days a week. You’re not worried whether your next decision is going to get everybody killed when they go out there. The corporate world would actually be a lot easier.” 

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A two-income American family with an average income that dutifully invests in a 401(k) plan using typical strategies will lose $155,000 – or about 30 percent of what they should have saved for retirement -- to Wall Street fees, according to a study by an economic justice advocacy organization. 

The Demos study, released last month, is just the latest in a long string of research showing 401(k) plans are a better deal for Wall Street than for you. Many show that people lose about one-third of their retirement money to fees that they don't even know they're paying. The actual lifetime impact of fees is a matter of widespread debate, but it shouldn’t be. In one dramatic example, John Bogle, the inventor of index funds, demonstrated how fees can consume 80 percent of an investor's money through something he’d dubbed “the tyranny of compounding fees.” (Click on the link to see his proof.)

But some relief may be on the way. Regulations first set in motion in in 2007 (!) will finally kick in next week. Soon, 401(k) statements will include a fact box -- similar to the new info-boxes on credit card bills -- that lists the fee rates (“expense ratios’) associated with fund selections and shows in dollars how much the investor paid.

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The disclosure box is a welcome change, but it's probably not going to make much of a difference, laments Robert Hiltonsmith, author of the Demos study.

"It will be underwhelming from a sticker shock point of view. It will not have the effect the doomsayers predict," Hiltonsmith said. The dollar amounts shown will reflect annual amounts, not the real harm from loss of compounding growth, he said.  A 27-year-old with $10,000 invested in a mutual paying a 1 percent expense ratio will pay only about $100 in fees in a year, a number that will hardly inspire shopping around, Hiltonsmith figures.

But that benign-sounding 1 percent annual fee is the source of most 401(k) folly. Compounded, it can result in loss of one-third of retirement savings, or more.

Doing the math to determine real investing costs from fees is tricky. It involves a long series of assumptions on factors so individualized that no 401(k) projection model is easily generalized.  Instead, the Demos study and others like it are merely "for instance ..." examples.

An obfuscator's dream
Wall Street protectors use this to their advantage. The Investment Company Institute, which is critical of the Demos study and others like it, uses its own calculations to claim the average investor pays only $248 annually in 401(k) fees and $20,000 during their lifetime. Even that conservative estimate should be alarming, when the average 401(k) balances is $75,000, according to Fidelity Investments, and those close to retirement (ages 55-64) have an average balance of $100,000.

It doesn’t have to be hard to see how recurring fees devour much of your 401(k) money. Here's a simple, if slightly imprecise, way to think about what happens when someone takes 1 percent of your money every year.  If you had a dollar, and someone took one penny every year for 30 years, you'd only have 70 cents at the end. That's what investing in a 401(k) mutual fund does to your money. These fee losses are obscured by additional contributions you make, and by market ups and downs – complex 401(k) statements are an obfuscator's dream -- but there's no way around it: Fees are killing most investors' returns.

(If you are a stickler for math, more precise calculations will appear at the bottom of this column. They usually just muddy the conversation, however.)

How does Wall Street get away with this? Obscurity sure helps, but there is another element of human nature that the system was born to exploit and that most people seem incapable of avoiding: Behavioral economists call it "hyperbolic discounting."  In short, Wall Street does a much better job of thinking about both time and money than you do.

Try this experiment, now oft repeated in the behaviorist world: If I offered you $50 today or $100 one year from now, which would you choose?  Most take the $50 and run.  Now, let's do the same exercise with a slight adjustment.  If I offered you $50 five years from now, or $100 six years from now, which would you pick? Almost certainly the $100.   But notice: if I asked you the same question in five years, you'd probably take the $50 again.  That’s a funny way to think about money (the technical term is “dynamic inconsistency”).

The most obvious lesson from hyperbolic discounting is that people's choices are often focused on immediate gratification.  But the other side of that coin, behaviorists tell us, is that people are too quick to discount rewards in the future and, to our point, to discount the impact of future financial pain. In other words, telling someone they might be missing $150,000 from their retirement account 30 years from now means almost nothing to them – they get angrier about a $35 overdraft fee taken last week from their bank account.  Wall Street's genius is this: By stealing people's money from the future, they avoid consumers' wrath.

Perhaps it's possible to educate all Americans on the tyranny of compounding investment fees; and creating a fact box on consumers' quarterly statements that inspires them to shop around for lower-cost mutual funds is a step in that direction. But behavioral economists say that's highly unlikely to make much of a difference.  Better to create a system that by default enters workers into low-cost, relatively safe investment vehicles and let them pick riskier, more expensive options if they wish, Hiltonsmith says.

“Even if there was more sticker shock, (workers) wouldn’t know what to,” he said. “The way things are now, we’re asking workers to take on a full-time job, to be financial experts.”

Anyone who thinks the current system is working is doing an awful lot of hyperbolic discounting when it comes to society’s future.  Perhaps the most sobering fact in the Demos study, one that Hiltonsmith downplayed, is that his "perfect" investing couple had only $350,000 in their 401(k) at the end of 40 years. Does anyone think Mr. and Mrs. Perfect can live for 20 years on $350,000?  And these two did everything right -- they invested between 5 percent and 9 percent of their income every year, starting at age 25. They never stopped making contributions -- which nearly everyone does during job changes or tough times -- and they never made a withdrawal, which roughly one-third of investors do. Still, they were left with just $175,000 each at age 65.  Once and for all, that should expose the dirty little secret of 401(k) plans:

The math doesn't work.

Now, onto the math assumptions from above.  For Demos’ model, Hiltonsmith created an imaginary couple who worked from 1966-2005. Each earned the median income for their gender during that time (a range from $50,000 to $70,000 total, annually) and socked away a slowly increasing amount of their income during that time, starting at 5 percent and ending at 9 percent. Half their money was invested in a stock fund, half in a bond fund. Average growth and average published stock and bond fund fees from 2010 were applied to their accounts, and average trading costs were also deducted. No employee match was considered in the calculation, given the wide variety of matching programs – and the fact that many firms suspended matching contributions during the recession. Of course, the couple is a pure abstraction -- there were no 401(k) accounts in the 1960s.  But it takes this kind of modeling to create a hypothetical that covers an investor's entire work life, and their potential lifetime loss from fees.

As for my "one penny" calculation: Taking one penny every year from a dollar is not the same as taking 1 percent, but it's close.  Because the initial dollar amount drops with each deduction, each 1 percent annual hit is slightly less. To wit, 1 percent of 99 cents is less than 1 percent of 100 cents.  Do the math, and you'll find taking one percent of someone's money every year for 30 years is the equivalent of taking 26.03 percent. Still quite a lot of money for nothing.

What should you do with this information? Absent a better idea, put all your 401(k) money in an index fund, which will have fees that are 70 percent to 90 percent lower than standard mutual funds.  And watch your next quarterly statement for those depressing fee boxes. Most employers have two months to comply with the rules that take effect July 1, so you won’t start seeing the fee information until your first statement after Aug. 10.

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A coalition of nurses’ unions is calling for a “Robin Hood” tax on Wall Street, which they say could generate up to $350 billion a year, in the first major protest ahead of this weekend’s NATO summit in Chicago.

Their pitch: impose a tax of 50 cents on every $100 of trades of stocks, bonds, dividends and other financial transactions, which are not currently taxed. The U.S. would join more than a dozen other nations that already have a financial transaction tax, according to National Nurses United (NNU).

"I've been asked many, many times ... 'What are you doing here as nurses? ... What do you have to do with the economy?'" Karen Higgins, a registered nurse and co-president of NNU, said to the crowd in Chicago's Daley Plaza.  

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"We're watching this every day. We're watching patients suffer," she said, noting that nurses were seeing people without insurance or others who can't afford their co-pays, as well as a spike in the number of children with adult diseases due to eating poorly because their parents can't afford healthy food. "This is serious and in some cases it is actually deadly."

Storify: Scenes from the NATO summit protests

"We know the solution .. we are watching and seeing Wall Street throwing our money away as we see people suffer and die. It will not continue," she said. "We pay sales tax. It is time for Wall Street to start paying back what they owe the rest of the country and they need to pay sales tax."

The nurses’ call echoes last fall’s outcry by the Occupy Wall Street protesters over income equality, corruption and corporate greed. Proceeds from the Wall Street tax would support social services, education and healthcare.

The financial transaction tax is not a new concept. The U.S. had one from 1914 to 1966, and several politicians called for another one after the Wall Street crash in 1987, National Nurses United said.

Supporters include Nobel Laureate economists Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, and Joseph Stiglitz, the former World Bank chief economist -- both of whom have spoken out in favor of such a tax in the past.

A bill introduced last November by two U.S. Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. Peter DeFazio, calls for a tax of 0.03 percent -- or 3 cents on every $100 -- on most non-consumer financial trading including stocks, bonds and other debts. It would raise more than $43 billion a year, according to DeFazio's office, which cited analysis from Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.

Others, however, are against what has been called a “sin” tax on Wall Street.

“Our research shows unambiguously that higher trading costs depress the prices of stocks and bonds,” business school professors Yakov Amihud and Haim Mendelson  wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “A transactions tax will end up punishing Main Street, hurting the economy and reducing U.S. Treasury revenues in the next few years. It will thus exacerbate the effects of the financial crisis.”

The tax proposal protesters were initially targeting the G8 summit of global financial leaders that starts today. But when that meeting was moved from Chicago to Camp David in Maryland, they opted to carry on their demonstrations here anyway to take advantage of the large number of protesters converging on the city for the NATO summit.

Mary O'Sullivan, 72, came to the protest with her husband Chris Fogarty, 77. The retired married couple each held a sign, one reading "Honk To Indict Banksters" and the other "Stop Gov't Crimes."

"We're hoping that even at this late date the government will recognize that there is so much pain and suffering amongst the people that they will at least start paying attention," O'Sullivan said, noting she had recently spoken with a woman at a city mental health care facility that's being closed down. "She has no idea where she is going to go or how she is going to get there, and in the meantime, we're spending millions of dollars on drones to kill people."

Earlier this week, protesters demonstrated against the shuttering of local schools and mental health clinics, the loss of homes through foreclosures, and environmental issues surrounding the controversial “Tar Sands” pipeline, and they stormed the building that houses the headquarters of President Obama’s campaign.

The city has assigned 3,100 officers plus hundreds from other cities to guard against the kind of violence that broke out in the streets of Seattle at the World Trade Organization meeting in 1999, NBCChicago.com reported, and officials have warned of massive travel disruptions.

They’ve also imposed limits on how close the protesters, which include dozens of unions and anti-war, environmental, education, healthcare and civil liberties’ groups, can get to the convention center where the summit is being held -- within “sight and sound” of it, according to the Chicago Tribune -- raising the ire of the demonstrators.

The National Lawyers Guild, which is sending out legal observers to the demonstrations and aiding those who are detained, said late Thursday that at least 20 people have been arrested so far this week. Occupy Chicago said 11 arrests occurred Wednesday night at an area home – though it’s not clear if those 11 were included in the guild’s tally. 

Organizers expect the biggest crowds at a rally led by anti-war activists on Sunday, in which a group of 9/11-era veterans plan to return their service medals to protest the "war on terror."

Todd Gitlin, a former leader of the 1960s-era group Students for a Democratic Society and a Columbia University sociology and journalism professor, said the Wall Street tax was an obvious focus for protesters.

“It’s concrete. It might be winnable. It has global resonance because you’ve got  … several national governments in Europe that support it,” he said, noting that it clearly distinguishes between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, and had an “intrinsic fairness” about it. “It’s a reform that rings sensible to large numbers of people but a lot of work has to be done… . Most people right now I think don’t get it.”

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Crews cleaned up Oakland's historic City Hall on Sunday from damage inflicted overnight during violent anti-Wall Street protests that resulted in about 400 arrests, marking one of the largest mass arrests since nationwide protests began last year.

At a press conference on Sunday, Oakland police and city officials said they did not have a final tally of arrests. Earlier in the day, the city's emergency operations office put the figure at around 400. The skirmishes injured three officers and at least one demonstrator.

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Police said a group of protesters burned an American flag in front of City Hall, then entered the building and destroyed a vending machine, light fixtures and a historic scale model of the edifice. The city's 911 emergency system was overwhelmed during the disturbances.

 

• Related: Oakland assesses City Hall damage after Occupy break-in

"While City Hall sustained damage, we anticipate that all city offices will be open for regular business tomorrow," said Deanna Santana, Oakland city administrator.

Oakland has become an unlikely flashpoint for the national "Occupy" protests against economic inequality that began last year in New York's financial district and spread to dozens of cities.

The protests in most cities have been peaceful and sparked a national debate over how much of the country's wealth is held by the richest 1 percent of the population. President Barack Obama has sought to capitalize on the attention by calling for higher taxes on the richest Americans.

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Occupy protests focused on Oakland after a former Marine and Iraq war veteran, Scott Olsen, was critically injured during a demonstration in October. Protesters said he was hit in the head by a tear gas canister but authorities have never said exactly how he was hurt.

The Occupy movement appeared to lose momentum late last year as police cleared protest camps in several cities.

Violence erupted again in Oakland on Saturday afternoon when protesters attempted to take over the apparently empty downtown convention center to establish a new headquarters and draw attention to the problem of homelessness.

'Violent splinter group'
Police in riot gear moved in to drive back the crowd, which they estimated at about 500 protesters.

"Officers were pelted with bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices and burning flares," the Oakland Police Department said in a statement. "The Oakland Police Department deployed smoke, tear gas and beanbag projectiles in response to this activity."

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan accused a "violent splinter group" of the Occupy movement of fomenting the Saturday protests and using the city as its playground. Protesters have accused the city of overreacting and using heavy-handed tactics.

Oakland officials on Sunday were inspecting damage inside City Hall that was caused by about 50 Occupy protesters who broke in and smashed glass display cases, spray-painted graffiti, and burned the U.S. and California flags.

The break-in on Saturday was the culmination of a day of clashes between protesters and police. At least 300 people were arrested on charges ranging from vandalism and failure to disperse.

At least three officers and one protester were injured.

Quan said Occupy protesters have caused an estimated $2 million in damages from vandalism since October. She said the cost to the city related to the Occupy Oakland protests is pegged at about $5 million.

 

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This article includes reporting from NBCBayArea.com, The Associated Press and msnbc.com's Miranda Leitsinger.

 

 

 

Hundreds of people gathered at courthouses across the nation Friday to protest a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that removed most limits on corporate and labor spending in federal elections.

Occupy Wall Street activists joined forces with Move to Amend, a coalition that organized the event in more than 100 cities, though the turnout in many places was low. In some cities, fewer than a dozen protesters showed up. Protesters said they were kicking off petition drives in support of a constitutional amendment that would overturn a 2010 court ruling that allowed private groups to spend huge amounts on political campaigns with few restrictions.

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Washington, D.C.
In Washington, a couple of hundred protesters gathered across the street from the Supreme Court, chanting "Rights are for people, not for corporations" and "Which side are you on?" Police arrested a handful of protesters. At least 13 people were arrested, including one arrested inside the Supreme Court building on the ground floor.

"I don't see how a real democracy of the people can take place when so much money is in our electoral system," said Lucy Craig, 36, from New Jersey, who was holding a sign that read: "Citizens United: best democracy money can buy."

Boston
More than 100 protesters rallied outside the federal courthouse. Jacqueline Leary, 72, a writer from Beverly, Mass., said there was too much money in politics.

"Citizens United, it's been eating away at me, infuriating me," she said, referring to the court decision that prohibits the government from placing limits on independent spending for political purposes. "It's so wrong and erodes your belief in the Supreme Court," she added.

Phoenix, Ariz.
About 50 protesters marched outside the Sandra Day O'Connor U.S. Court House in Phoenix, chanting, "The 99 are here to stay, Wall Street it's time to pay!"

"Four hundred Americans control all the wealth," said Micky Mize, a spokesman for Occupy Phoenix. "They are the ones who control the job market, they are trying to control everything from education to our birthrights."

San Francisco
In San Francisco, where a couple of hundred protesters gathered in the city's financial district, protesters chained themselves to the front doors of Wells Fargo's corporate headquarters. Others linked arms to prevent people from entering a Bank of America branch. Authorities said 18 people were arrested in the protests, SFGate.com reported. 

Activists were hoping to disrupt the city's financial district as part of "Occupy Wall Street West."  A protest was planned later Friday at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as part of the "Occupy the Courts" action.

Protesters chained themselves to the entrance of Wells Fargo Bank's corporate headquarters at 555 California St. near Montgomery Street, protester Pete Woiwode told NBCBayArea.com.
      
"We are trying to shut down the bank," Woiwode said.

Read more on NBCBayArea.com

Woiwode, 29, of Oakland, said there were protesters on all four sides of the building, as well as a marching band that was playing music.

Donna Vieira, 42, a real estate appraiser, was protesting at Wells Fargo in San Francisco because she said the bank had "unfairly" foreclosed on her home in Reno, Nev., last year.

"I can get it back if the attorney general takes action," Vieira said. "Nobody is going after the big banks. And loss and pain and suffering doesn't matter to the regulators."

Cleveland
In Cleveland, about 40 to 50 protesters in hats, hoods and gloves held a morning vigil outside the Metzenbaum Federal Courthouse, followed by a march through downtown streets. During the march, paper $50 "bills" were taped over the mouths of ralliers.

Chicago
About 50 people braved blizzard-like conditions in Chicago, waving at passing cars and chanting, "Money out of politics."

The Associated Press, Reuters and NBCBayArea.com contributed to this report.

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Most Americans spent Thanksgiving inside their homes with families, food and football. Others used the day to give thanks alongside strangers at Occupy encampments, serving turkey or donating their time in solidarity with the anti-Wall Street movement that has gripped a nation consumed by economic despair.

In New York City, about 300 demonstrators lined up in Zuccotti Park at a rack loaded with meals, served in plastic trays wrapped with brown paper, NBC New York reported.

Organizers said they had between 2,000 and 3,000 Thanksgiving meals available to distribute at Zuccotti Park, where the protest movement began on Sept. 17 before spreading nationwide. Protesters were evicted from the park on Nov. 15.

"So many people have given up so much to come and be a part of the movement because there is really that much dire need for community," said Megan Hayes, a chef and organizer with the Occupy Wall Street Kitchen in New York. "We decided to take this holiday opportunity to provide just that — community."

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Click here for complete NBC New York coverage

In upstate New York, Danny Cashman, 25, an Afghanistan war veteran who works for a company that resells cellphones, said he sleeps at least three nights a week at an encampment in Rochester to show his solidarity with the movement.

"For today, this is my family," Cashman said as he dug into a chicken dinner at the 35-tent encampment in tiny Washington Square Park. "We have a great brotherhood, great friends, a great community."

Los Angeles
More than 480 tents have been erected on the lawns of City Hall, activist Teri Adaju, 46, said she typically serves dinner to homeless people on Thanksgiving and knows that many at the Los Angeles encampment were just that.

Still, she added, "Everybody's in good cheer."

San Francisco
At least 400 occupiers at a plaza in the financial district were also served traditional Thanksgiving fixings sent by the renowned Glide Memorial Church to volunteers and supporters of the movement fighting social and economic inequality.

"We are thankful that we are, first and foremost, in a country where we can protest," said the Rev. Cecil Williams, the founder of Glide and a fixture in the city's activist community. "And we are thankful that we believe that there are things that could be worked out and that we have a sense of hope. But we know that hope only comes when you make a stand."

Las Vegas
Occupy protesters had a potluck meal at their campsite near the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Organizer Sebring Frehner said he was happy to skip his traditional meal at home.

"Instead of hunkering down with five or six close individuals in your home, people you probably see all of the time anyway, you are celebrating Thanksgiving with many different families — kind of like the original Thanksgiving," Frehner said.

Related stories:

Thanksgiving for US troops in Afghanistan 

Occupy movements nationwide celebrate holiday  

 

Update 4:50 p.m.: And that's the final count: Up 430 points, or 4 percent, at 11,239.97. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered two-thirds of the value it lost Monday, when it registered its sixth-largest decline ever.  The Nasdaq Composite Index — which also swung sharply back and forth all day — ended up 124.83 points, or 5.3 percent, at 2,482.52.

Latest Dow Jones Industrial Average

The wild swings Tuesday — as many as 450 points in a single hour — inspired  cartoonists with the same metaphor: the roller coaster. Click here for the slideshow.

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Update 4 p.m. ET: The wild day on Wall Street is ending with yet another surprise. After a couple of hours of massive swings (as many as 450 points in a single hour) the Dow Jones Industrial Average zoomed to its highest level of the day, to 11,239.97 — a 430-point gain over Monday.

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Update 3:30 p.m. ET: The Fed's pledge Tuesday to keep interest rates at record lows for two more years comes couched in downbeat assessments of the economy. At the same time, it indicated that it refuses for now to take further action, which appears to be giving markets fits. 

Msnbc.com's John W. Schoen says Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues "have very few cards left to play." 

"Since the Panic of 2008, the central bank has flooded the financial system with cash, spending $1.4 trillion to buy bonds backed by high-risk mortgages and snapping up another $900 billion in Treasury bonds," Schoen writes. "The Fed's easy money policy is designed to keep credit flowing after the collapse of a decade-long borrowing binge."

Neil Irwin of The Washington Post agrees, calling the statement "a modest step" and saying that "by explicitly stating the central bank's easy money policies — specifically, a short-term interest rate target near zero — for two more years, the Fed is hoping to lower interest rates throughout the economy to encourage immediate investment and consumption."

Matt Phillips of The Wall Street Journal noted that three members of the Federal Open Markets Committee voted against the statement.

"The market doesn't like the look of the dissension in the ranks on the FOMC. It's not just the folks at the extremely hawkish — meaning inflation focused — wing of the committee who were squawking about the change to the extended period language," Phillips writes.

But Joseph Arsenio, managing director of Arsenio Capital Management in Larkspur, Calif., was more optimistic:

"The reason the market is down is because slow growth over an extended period is embedded in that statement. I don't believe that will be the case. The Fed's ability to project growth has been poor. All this indicates is the Fed will tolerate a higher level of inflation."
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Update 3 p.m. ET: As the Federal Open Markets Committee released its statement Tuesday afternoon, the stock market dived sharply. Since then, it has been gyrating wildly, falling or rising as far as 175 points in minutes. 

A 3 p.m. ET, the Dow was down 59½ points, 320 lower than it had been a couple of times before the statement came out at 2:15 p.m. The Nasdaq composite index was down 16. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was down to 2.27 percent, its low for the year. Oil prices sank by $2.03 a barrel. Gold — a retreat for investors in tough markets — was up to a near-record $1,766 an ounce. 

There's still no way to definitively answer the question posed by Reuters: Will the Fed decision "be enough to put a floor on a U.S. stock market"? But early indications are that the answer will be "no."

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Update 2:30 p.m. ET: Reuters says it's "unclear whether the (Fed) decision, which involved no new commitment of funds for bond purchases, would be enough to put a floor on a U.S. stock market that has fallen more than 15 percent in the last two weeks."

That uncertainty appeared to be reflected on Wall Street, where the Dow swung sharply back and forth as investors digested the news. 

The Fed said economic growth was weaker than expected and that inflation was likely to "remain contained."

"The committee currently anticipates that economic conditions — including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run — are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through mid-2013," it said.

 

Here's the full statement:

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in June indicates that economic growth so far this year has been considerably slower than the Committee had expected.  Indicators suggest a deterioration in overall labor market conditions in recent months, and the unemployment rate has moved up.  Household spending has flattened out, investment in nonresidential structures is still weak, and the housing sector remains depressed.  However, business investment in equipment and software continues to expand.  Temporary factors, including the damping effect of higher food and energy prices on consumer purchasing power and spending as well as supply chain disruptions associated with the tragic events in Japan, appear to account for only some of the recent weakness in economic activity.  Inflation picked up earlier in the year, mainly reflecting higher prices for some commodities and imported goods, as well as the supply chain disruptions.  More recently, inflation has moderated as prices of energy and some commodities have declined from their earlier peaks.  Longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable.

Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability.  The Committee now expects a somewhat slower pace of recovery over coming quarters than it did at the time of the previous meeting and anticipates that the unemployment rate will decline only gradually toward levels that the Committee judges to be consistent with its dual mandate.  Moreover, downside risks to the economic outlook have increased. The Committee also anticipates that inflation will settle, over coming quarters, at levels at or below those consistent with the Committee's dual mandate as the effects of past energy and other commodity price increases dissipate further.  However, the Committee will continue to pay close attention to the evolution of inflation and inflation expectations.

To promote the ongoing economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with its mandate, the Committee decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent.  The Committee currently anticipates that economic conditions--including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run--are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through mid-2013.  The Committee also will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings.  The Committee will regularly review the size and composition of its securities holdings and is prepared to adjust those holdings as appropriate.

The Committee discussed the range of policy tools available to promote a stronger economic recovery in a context of price stability.  It will continue to assess the economic outlook in light of incoming information and is prepared to employ these tools as appropriate.

Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Elizabeth A. Duke; Charles L. Evans; Sarah Bloom Raskin; Daniel K. Tarullo; and Janet L. Yellen.

Voting against the action were: Richard W. Fisher, Narayana Kocherlakota, and Charles I. Plosser, who would have preferred to continue to describe economic conditions as likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate for an extended period.

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Update 2:23 p.m. ET: The Dow Jones Industrial shot downward as soon as the Federal Open Markets Committee announced it was likely to hold key interest rates steady for the next two years. After coming close to a 250-point gain a couple of times Tuesday, the Dow had given back all its gains and was down about 30 points.

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Update 2:20 p.m. ET: The Federal Open Markets Committee says it will likely keep a key interest rate at a record low for two more years. Updates to come.

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Update 2:15 p.m. ET: After coming close to a 250-point gain a couple of times Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was falling in anticipation of a statement from the Federal Open Markets Committee.

Many economists were dubious about the prospect that the Federal Reserve committee would take strong action to stem losses on the markets (see below). At 2:15 p.m. ET, as the statement was scheduled to be released, the Dow was up 95.06 points had fallen back below 11,000 at 10,904.

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Update 1:48 p.m. ET: Gene Sperling, President Barack Obama's chief economic adviser, blames "hard-line" political posturing for the turmoil in the economy.

"Putting our economy first and our politics second is what's imperative" for a recovery, Sperling says in an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell. 

But he refuses to predict what the Federal Open Market Committee might do when it releases a statement at 2:15 p.m. ET.

"Smart economic advisers at the White House don't comment on the independent Federal Reserve," he said.

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Update 1:38 p.m. ET: The Federal Open Market Committee is expected to release a statement about 2:15 p.m. ET after its meeting. There's a lot of speculation about what, if any, concrete steps the Fed committee will take, but CNBC's executive news editor, Patti Domm, cautions that "the decline in financial markets is viewed as too fresh for the Fed to react to in any major way."

Joseph LaVorgna, chief economist at Deutsche Bank, tells Domm the Fed has few options left.

"I think what they should and will do is downgrade the growth outlook, downgrade the inflation run up and just say rates are going to stay where they are until the economy gets traction — essentially a downshifting of tone and that's it," LaVorgna said. "Effectively, there are no policy levers left."  

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Update 1:08 p.m. ET: The Treasury Department says Secretary Timothy Geithner spoke by phone with his Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier Wang Qishan, about "the challenges facing the global economy and the state of global financial markets."

The terse statement from Treasury gave no further details on the call, so it's not known what hey said. But China has been withering in its criticism of the Obama administration's economic policies in recent days.

In a commentary dated Wednesday, the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, wrote that Washington remains "hamstrung" economically and politically. Unless Washington rights the ship, Xinhua said, the current crisis will "depress global trade and send biting chills through many exports-dependent countries.

In what Reuters said might be a sign that Beijing's stance was softening, however, Premier Wen Jiabao urged nations Tuesday to work together to stabilize the markets.

"Speaking after a regular meeting by the Chinese cabinet, Wen alluded to debt problems in the United States and Europe and called on 'relevant' countries to implement responsible monetary policies and rein in fiscal deficits," Reuters reported.

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Update 12:45 p.m. ET: Economists are all over the map when it comes to whether the weakening markets mean the underlying economy is weakening.

In a note to investors, Merrill Lynch credit strategist Hans Mikkelsen said the sell-off over the past couple of weeks is a "reassessment higher of the probability that the US slips back into recession."

Monday's 634-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average "appears motivated by such continued economic fears, more so than the S&P's downgrade" of the U.S. credit rating last week, Mikkelsen wrote Monday, saying Merrill expected "very slow economic growth — but not the recession that appears to be increasingly priced into spreads."

Rather than the expected and actual US downgrade we think that the biggest factor behind the sell-off in corporate credit over the past couple of weeks — including today — has been an increase in the probability that the US economy will enter another recession in the not too distant future. For example our economists last week estimated a 35% probability of the US entering a new recession over the next year.

But Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, told The New York Times that that's not necessarily the case:

Admittedly, aside from the stock market slide, signs are not exactly great right now for the economy. But Mr. Shepherdson is taking heart from the 4.8 percent increase in chain store sales reported by Redbook Research during the first week of August compared with a year earlier.

Consumer confidence reports have been dismal recently, but Mr. Shepherdson points out that when you ask people "'how do you feel, they say 'miserable.' But that doesn't necessarily mean you don't go shopping."

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Update 12:25 p.m. ET: The impact of this month's market turmoil will be especially big on state budgets, many of which have already been slashed in recent sessions.

Virginia Finance Secretary Ric Brown said the state will likely have to make even further cuts in a projected budget that already has to account for required increases in school funding formulas, improvements to mental health care and greater contributions to the state pension fund.

Now "we will be reassessing all of that," in light of the market downturn, Brown told NBC station WVIR-TV of Charlottesville.

In Washington state, Gov. Christine Gregoire said agencies and workers must find additional budget cuts as high as 10 percent. That's on top of $4.5 billion in projected spending already identified in this year's legislative session, mainly coming from education funding, The Associated Press reported. 

"For every two steps forward in the recovery, it seems we are taking one step back," Gregoire wrote in a letter to state employees this week.

In Minnesota, Budget Commissioner Jim Schowalter said the market downturn will likely "have ripple effects throughout our economy."

Minnesota is already borrowing $700 million to help balance its current budget, Minnesota Public Radio reported, plus $500 million more to fund public works projects. Now, Schowalter said, the state will probably be forced to pay more to borrow.

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Update 12:04 p.m. ET: After a day of "serious extremes," the markets are experiencing an expected rebound, says Arthur Cashin, UBS Financial Services' director of floor operations. But "the key is 2:15," he tells CNBC. "What will the Fed say?"

 

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Update 11:51 a.m. ET: European markets are closing broadly higher: The FTSEurofirst 300 closed up 1.3 percent at 948.21, and the STOXX Europe 600 was up 3 percent at 232.31.

Reuters said traders were "rummaging around for bargains, with hopes the U.S. Federal Reserve will hint at a plan to revive the economy."

"Short-term, the market will hinge on what the Fed has to say, but we think the next few months will remain volatile," said Julian Chillingworth, chief information officer at Rathbones Brothers of London. "It is difficult to say whether now is the right time to buy."

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Update 11:32 a.m ET: The market turmoil  comes just as the Federal Open Market Committee is about to release a statement that could have a big impact.

Goldman-Sachs predicted the Fed "will take steps toward slightly easier policy":

After several months of disappointing economic data and the recent market rout, we forecast that the FOMC will take steps toward slightly easier policy at today's meeting. Specifically, we look for the committee to indicate that the size of its balance sheet will remain unchanged for an extended period of time-similar to the guidance it already gives for the level of the federal funds rate. We see a good chance that the statement will also include an explicit easing bias, signaling that the committee is monitoring economic and financial developments and is prepared to provide additional accommodation if necessary. Our forecasts assume that the Fed will eventually shift the composition of its Treasury purchases toward longer-duration securities, but we do not expect that step at today's meeting. Finally, the statement will undoubtedly include a downgrade of the committee's assessment of current conditions, perhaps acknowledging that weakness has been less transitory that anticipated.

"Given the turmoil in the market," ForexYard also expects "the Fed to take action:"

"(T)he Fed could change the wording in its statement to reflect its intention to hold interest rates at lows for a longer period of time," the online broker predicted. "The Fed could also signal its intention to hold longer maturity assets on its balance sheet. All of these would be a USD negative. A failure by the Fed to act may also unnerve investors which could be positive for the dollar."

Bad economic news has seemingly been unremitting in recent years, but Monday's market dive was notably bad. Breaking reports of drops — a hundred points at a time — fueled even more investors to sell.

Latest Dow Jones Industrial Average

"The worrisome thing is that this very pessimism may be adding to the nation's dour economic condition, msnbc.com senior business writer Allison Linn observes:

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"It's definitely a vicious cycle. There's no doubt about that," Werner De Bondt, a finance professor with the Richard H. Driehaus Center for Behavioral Finance at DePaul University in Chicago. "The difficulty is to get out of the vicious cycle."

De Bondt puts Americans feelings about the economy into three buckets:

• Anger about the financial crisis and bailout.
• Anxiety about the future.
• Simple resignation about the entire thing.

"People have had it, you know, they've had it with this whole thing in Washington, with Wall Street," he said. ...

Nevertheless, that kind of thinking can overshadow any positive economic news or momentum. De Bondt worries that it has become so common to be pessimistic, and even to question whether the current economic malaise spells the end of America as we know it.

“What is amazing is that I think we are slowly giving up on the idea that we ourselves — (and) definitely our children — will have it as good as we did. That is really amazing. It’s undermined the quote-unquote American way,” De Bondt said.