Tagged: economy

Why do businesses selling the same thing crowd around each other rather than strike out on their own?

To answer that question, Adam Davidson and Chana Joffe-Walt walk through some New York City neighborhoods – the diamond district, the plant district, the chess district — where store after store sells the exact same thing.

On the day after voters returned President Obama to the White House and kept Democrats in control of the Senate and Republicans in control of the House:

"Investors pulled back sharply ... [amid] rising worries about the upcoming fiscal fight in Congress," The Wall Street Journal writes.

For better or worse, the financial markets face a little less uncertainty — investors know who's going to be president for the next four years. Steve Inskeep talks to David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, about what the outcome of the presidential election means for the economy and financial markets.

For months, Americans have been watching the presidential political drama play out nightly on the news. Now, with President Obama's victory, that story is ending.

But for the economy, an action thriller is just beginning.

Congress has just weeks to jump to the rescue of an economy moving closer and closer to the so-called fiscal cliff. That phrase refers to a $600 billion cluster of automatic spending cuts and tax hikes — all coming together at year's end.