The election behind them, U.S. investors dumped stocks Wednesday and turned their focus to a world of problems economically harmful tax increases and spending cuts at home and a deepening recession in Europe.
The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits was unchanged last week at a seasonally adjusted 374,000, suggesting slow improvement in the job market.
Stocks of hospital companies rose sharply and insurance companies fell Thursday after the Supreme Court upheld a requirement that almost all Americans carry health insurance.
Former members of a congressional panel that oversaw bailouts during the financial crisis are condemning a tax break for insurance giant American International Group. They say it amounts to an extra bailout worth billions of dollars.
The Dow Jones industrial average on Tuesday finally reclaimed the ground it held before the carnage of the Great Recession bailouts, bank failures, layoffs by the million and a stock market panic that cut retirement savings in half.
Old child support debts could cost thousands of poor men their only income next year because of a policy aimed at reducing the cost to the government of mailing paper checks to pay federal benefits.
Companies that were bailed out during the financial crisis still owe U.S. taxpayers nearly $133 billion. Treasury's plans to recoup that money have been slowed by the volatile stock market and weakness among smaller banks.