U.S. stock futures up before open

U.S. stock futures jumped Tuesday morning after another turbulent night for overseas markets and the steepest losses for U.S. and foreign indexes since 2008.

With the Dow Jones Industrial average closing below 11,000 Monday, government and business leaders were grappling with how best to shore up the U.S. economy and reassure panicked investors.

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The Federal Reserve is likely to consider new measures to boost economic growth at its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday. The stock market opens at 9:30 a.m.

Asian markets plummeted on Tuesday, but recovered slightly late in the day. European markets opened sharply down, then gained ground, and were only slightly down by afternoon.

In Washington, President Obama canceled plans to travel to the Northern Virginia suburbs to announce new fuel efficiency standards for trucks and other oversize vehicles. Instead, he will meet with industry leaders at the White House to announce the standards.

The daily White House press brief also was cancelled. No explanation was given.

On Monday, Obama appeared before reporters and declared that the United States “always will be a triple-A country,” despite a decision by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade its credit rating last Friday.

The president said the downgrade indicated concern over the political paralysis that gripped Washington during the acrimonious debate over raising the debt ceiling. He called again for a combination of revenue increases and spending cuts to reduce the U.S. debt and deficits.

Monday’s stock market declines followed emergency action in the United States and Europe to help contain a debt crisis engulfing Italy and Spain, the continent’s fourth- and fifth-largest economies.

But the actions, and Obama’s reassurances, did not reverse the tide. At day’s end, the Dow had plunged 635 points, ending at 10,810, down about 5.6 percent. The Standard & Poor’s index tumbled 80 points to about 1120, down about 6.7 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 175 points, ending the day at 2,358, down 6.9 percent.

In one positive sign for the United States, investors continued to flock to Treasury bonds as a safe haven for their money. The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds fell to 2.38 percent from Friday’s close of 2.56 percent.