Fiscal cliff deal includes at least $67.9 billion for special interests

With warnings about tripping over cans kicked down roads and bungee jumping into abysses, reactions from China to the U.S. "fiscal cliff" budget deal are colorful - and critical. Read more

More disputes, and more disruptive ones to the economy, loom despite the fiscal-cliff settlement, an economist writes.

Updated at 12:32 a.m. ET: An agreement to stave off the harshest and most immediate consequences of the fiscal cliff won approval in the House late Tuesday. President Barack Obama signed the law on Wednesday night,

The fiscal cliff compromise approved by the House late Tuesday will mute much but not all of the negative economic impact of going over the cliff. Most prominently, it will extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the vast majority of Americans and spare tens

America's economy may not be in as bad a state as Europe's, but the failures of its politicians—epitomised by this week's 11th-hour deal to avoid the calamity of the “fiscal cliff”—suggest that Washington's pattern of dysfunction is disturbingly