Where is the speaker? [originaltext]Thank you for joining us. I’m William Shapir

Thank you for joining us. I’m William Shapiro in London. In business news, European stock markets all opened low and are dropping. From London and Paris to Frankfurt and Zurich, markets are falling after the U.S. reported lower than expected retail sales. Last month, retail sales dropped 2.7 percent. The news, in addition to lower orders on machinery, sparked Japanese stocks to close at their lowest level in more than a month, with the Nikkei down almost five percent. The Seoul Kospi and Hong Kong Hang Seng also saw their markets close down. For more on what this means, we’ve brought financial analyst Abraham Silver to speak with us.