Financial Markets In The News  May 24, 2013 Originally published
on May 24, 2013 7:01 am    And for the past few months, global
stock markets appeared to be on an escalator going up,
relentlessly reaching new highs. This week, that ride seems to
be over - or maybe not. To find out, we turn, as we often do, to
David Wessel, he's the economics editor of The Wall Street
Journal.  Good morning.  DAVID WESSEL: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: David, put the stock markets into perspective for us.
Apart from the day-to-day ups and downs, which we have been
seeing, how have the markets been doing?  WESSEL: Well, they've
been doing pretty darn well. The U.S. stock market indexes are
up about 15 percent so far this year, Germany's 10 percent,
London 14 percent, France nine percent and Tokyo's Nikkei
average 70 percent higher than it was a year ago. But this week
was a reminder that stocks can go down as well as up. Japan lost
7.3 percent in one day on Thursday. And it had a wild ride on
Friday and recovered just a littl