Eileen Elliott
With the U.S. presidential election out of the way, the “fiscal cliff” is looming large, threatening to destroy the progress our economy has made since its 2008 meltdown. Simply put, the fiscal cliff, a term coined by U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, is a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes that will send the country into a deep recession if Congress and the President can’t find some other way to address our country’s deficit by Jan. 1, 2013.
The Taiwanese Foxconn factories in charge of assembling Apple’s iPhone 5 can’t keep up with the overwhelming demand.
A State Office of Emergency Management chief making $153,000 a year has been dismissed by order of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, for diverting publicly funded resources to have emergency crews remove a tree from his driveway during Hurricane Sandy, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
Of Puerto Rico’s nearly 4 million residents, 900,000 or 54 percent of voters who turned out for a referendum posed in two parts on Tuesday, said they were not content with the island’s current “status” as a territory of the United States. For the second part of the ballot, which asked voters to choose “statehood,” “independence,” or “sovereign free association,” 800,000, or 61 percent of the 1.3 million who filled out the question chose statehood, the Associated Press reported.
Highlights of Obamacare, formally, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which will go into full effect in 2014.
Referenda passed in Washington State and Colorado have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, in what advocates are hoping is the beginning of a sea change in U.S. policy. The Associated Press called passage of the referenda, “a milestone for persistent but often thwarted advocacy groups,” who have been seeking legalization for some 50 years.
The Standard and Poor’s 500 stock index is facing its biggest drop since June, The Economic Times reported Wednesday, down two-points as markets opened on the heels of the U.S.
Despite rising medical costs and a decline in membership, managed care firm, Wellpoint, second only to United Healthcare in membership size, posted third-quarter profits of $691.2 million on Wednesday, up from $683.2 million a year earlier, with the correlating share values of $2.15 up from $1.90, as reported by Businesswire.
Should the U.S. be pitched over the fiscal cliff, the effects on China would be far-reaching, The WSJ reports.
The innovative Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, which revolutionized lending with its ability to connect borrowers and lenders instantly online for loan options and real-time mortgage rates, will acquire Nebraska-based Mortech, a mortgage technology software company, PRNewswire reported.
Early poll results indicating that U.S. President Barack Obama will retain his position as the country's Chief Executive for four more years, that Republicans will remain in control of the House of Representative and Democrats the Senate, will most likely have a muted effect on world markets, CNNMoney reported from Hong Kong early this morning.
Reuters reported today that traders seem more concerned with the impending “fiscal cliff’ faced by the U.S. economy than the effects a victory for either President Barack Obama or Republican challenger Mitt Romney would have on the markets.
On Friday, India’s Intellectual Property Appellate Board revoked its patent on Pegasys, a hepatitis C treatment marketed by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, Roche Holding. It was the second blow to Roche in almost two months, following a finding in September that a generic version of the cancer treatment Tarceva, called Erlocip, didn’t infringe on its patent, The Wall Street Journal reported.
It seems clear that Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will not request a sovereign debt bailout from the European Central Bank this year, as reported by Agence France-Presse, based on remarks made by the Prime Minister during a Spanish radio interview on Tuesday.
As a winter chill sets in and a nor’easter threatens some of the same areas that were hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy last week, more than 40,000 New Yorkers are still without homes, according to City government officials, as reported by ABC News Tuesday.
