Washington Post: U.S. markets surged more than 2 percent Wednesday morning, hours after Congress approved a plan to avoid the “fiscal cliff” by raising taxes on American’s wealthiest households.
Washington Post: U.S. markets surged more than 2 percent Wednesday morning, hours after Congress approved a plan to avoid the “fiscal cliff” by raising taxes on American’s wealthiest households.
The late-night, last-minute deal allows the nation to avoid the severe austerity measures that were slated to take effect starting today. But it does not dramatically shrink the government’s soaring national debt, or address the nagging problem of persistent unemployment.
And it pushes off for two months a larger, potentially more painful battle over broader spending cuts and the federal debt limit, which means that the knock-down, drag-out fight that kept lawmakers in the Capitol building through the New Year’s holiday is likely to be repeated, in some fashion, over the next eight weeks.
