Stock market plunges badly as bailout stalls in House — Dow down 7%, Nasdaq down 9%

U.S. stocks have plunged badly over the last half-hour, as the bailout package began to hit a snag in the U.S. House of Representatives. It looks like they’ve hit a nadir, and recouped some of the losses. [Update: Well, they resumed their fall; The Dow closed today down 7 percent, and the Nasdaq 9.1 down percent.]

The drop came as the global credit crisis spread and votes against the bailout package began to mount in the House. As we write this, votes being cast in House show the legislation losing. [Confirmed: The House has rejected the package.]

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In Europe, the number of banks being bailed out hit four, and in the U.S., the market is also being hit by news of a takeover of Wachovia Corp., a bank that began wobbling badly late last week. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve and other major central banks around the world have moved quickly to pump hundreds of billions of dollars of liquidity into the market.

Many technology stocks — including Apple, Google and Sun — are lower than they have been in a year or more.

Citigroup will acquire Wachovia’s operations.

On the bright side, oil futures dropped six percent — but only because of assumptions that an economic slowdown will mean less demand for oil.

We’ll update as the day progresses, but for now here’s a list of the tech and digital media companies that have hit or approached 1-year lows.

Hit 52-week low:
AMD
Apple
CA
eBay
Electronic arts
Google
News Corp.
Northrop Grumman
Salesforce
Sun
Teradata
Time Warner
Yahoo

Approching 52-week low:
AT&T
Intel
Sony