NEW YORK (AP) -- For months, Americans have been subjected to a sort of economic water torture -- a maddening drip of bad news about jobs, gas prices, sagging home values, creeping inflation, the slouching dollar and a stock market in bumpy descent. Then came Bear Stearns. One of the five largest U.S. investment banks nearly collapsed in a single day before the government propped it up by backing emergency loans and a rival stepped in to buy it for a paltry $2 per share. To the drumbeat of signs that seemed to foretell a traditional recession, this added a...