NEW YORK (AP) – Stocks bounced off earlier lows Friday afternoon, but were still mostly lower as weak corporate earnings reports stir fears that the recession will be deeper and longer lasting than some investors had predicted.

General Electric Co.’s fourth-quarter numbers made investors uneasy. While the 46 percent drop in earnings met Wall Street’s lowered expectations, investors are worried the conglomerate will reduce its dividend. They are also nervous the company could lose its coveted ‘AAA’ credit rating because of the recession that has crimped lending at GE Capital and hurt its industrial and entertainment businesses. The stock, a component of the Dow Jones industrial average, fell 7 percent.

Reports from a range of industries gave fresh evidence of the toll the weak economy is taking: Copier and printer maker Xerox Corp. fell 9 percent after its results fell short of expectations. Capital One Financial Corp., which focuses on credit card lending, reported a loss rather than the profit Wall Street expected after it set aside money to cover bad debt. The stock lost 12 percent. And Harley-Davidson Inc. said it will cut jobs and reduce shipments because of falling demand. The company’s earnings for the final quarter of 2008 fell nearly 60 percent, sending the stock down 10 percent.

“I think we’re in a period of extreme risk aversion, and the earnings play into that,” said Tim Courtney, chief investment officer at Burns Advisory Group. “When you couple companies missing earnings estimates with investor risk aversion, there’s no tolerance” for buying.

In early afternoon trading, the Dow industrials fell 142.01, or 1.75 percent, to 7,980.79.

Broader stock indicators fell. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 8.38, or 1.01 percent, to 819.12, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 2.02, or 0.14 percent, to 1,463.47.