“U.S. stocks rose, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to its biggest two-day gain since July, as lawmakers passed a bill averting spending cuts and tax increases threatening a recovery in the world’s biggest economy,” Inyoung Hwang reports for Bloomberg. “All 10 groups in the S&P 500 (SPX) rose at least 1.1 percent and all 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied. Apple (AAPL) Inc. and Facebook Inc. (FB) jumped more than 2.4 percent, pacing gains with technology companies.”
“The S&P 500 jumped 1.8 percent to 1,451.61 at 2:05 p.m. in New York. The benchmark index is up 3.5 percent over two days. The Dow climbed 224.30 points, or 1.7 percent, to 13,328.44 today. Trading in S&P 500 companies was 32 percent above the 30- day average at this time of day,” Hwang reports. “The House of Representatives passed a bill just after 11 p.m. in Washington yesterday by a vote of 257-167, undoing income tax increases for more than 99 percent of households.”
Hwang reports, “The bipartisan vote broke a yearlong impasse over how to prevent more than $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts that could lead the economy back into recession… The measure isn’t the grand bargain on deficit reduction lawmakers wanted when they created the tax-and-spending deadlines over the past three years. While avoiding most of the immediate pain, it is only one step toward curbing the federal deficit — an issue that will return with a February fight over raising the $16.4 trillion debt limit.”
“Households making less than $450,000 per year would be spared an income tax rate increase under the agreement. The wealthy would see a rise in their top rate, to 39.6 percent from 35 percent,” Hwang reports. “The top tax rates on capital gains and dividends would go up to 23.8 percent, from 15 percent last year.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
