Ilya Marritz

Bloomberg BusinessWeek senior editor Diane Brady, and Will Saletan, Slate’s national correspondent, and Jacob Goldstein from NPR's Planet Money, and WNYC's Ilya Marritz from the Stock Exchange floor, chat about the S&P downgrade, the market reaction today, and the political fallout.

On a day when the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 600 points in afternoon trading, President Barack Obama said the U.S. remains a AAA country despite its credit rating down grade last Friday.

A panel appointed by the Cuomo Administration earlier this month has been tasked with giving advice on some of the most sensitive issues related to the controversial gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. But weeks after it was created, the group’s role is still unclear to some of its members, and there are questions about balance.

Investors in News Corporation, including the New York City public employee pension funds, are voicing concern and frustration over the company's leadership in light of the phone hacking and bribery scandals that have embroiled the company's British media properties. 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to attract a major research institution to New York City — and, as incentive, is offering publicly owned land and as much as $100 million in funding to a potential partner institution to be chosen through an application process.

Les Hinton, the CEO of Dow Jones and the man who oversaw operations at the Wall Street Journal, has resigned in what is the first U.S. casualty of the phone-hacking scandal in Britain.

The Cuomo Administration's plan to regulate the natural gas-drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has divided New Yorkers about evenly, according to a new poll from the Siena College Research Institute. The poll also shows most New Yorkers are fearful that fracking could harm the environment.

The disagreement between Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg over the future of the controversial Indian Point nuclear power station in upstate New York appears to be growing, as indicated by a draft study commissioned by the mayor's administration and obtained by WNYC.

The Queens Public Library is buying books again after budget cuts in 2010 forced the library to stop adding to its collections.

Governor Andrew Cuomo will open his state to a natural gas drilling technique that has been blamed for water contamination in other parts of the country. Up until now, New York has been the only state to sit out the fracking boom. The state is a big prize for the energy industry, but drillers will have to comply with tough regulations.

The city is taking control of a scandal-plagued payroll project away from outside consultants.

For decades, romance novels have been printed on cheap paper with racy covers and sold in drugstores. But fans are increasingly buying their books online. At the annual Romance Writers of America Conference in New York this week, some canny authors say they are discovering clever ways to cash in on the shift to e-books.

SEE PHOTO. A man perched on a traffic light in Times Square stopped traffic and drew hundreds of onlookers Tuesday morning when he refused to come down for an hour.

Since New York's legislature voted to make gay marriage legal, accountants say they've been inundated with calls from same sex couples asking for for advice. While there are benefits to tying the knot, those considering it should also consider the drawbacks.

Legislative action in Albany last week may make it easier to shut down the controversial Indian Point nuclear power station north of New York City. 

A survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms what many New Yorkers already knew: they earn more money than most Americans, and are more likely to work in the arts.

JP Morgan will pay $153.6 million to settle charges it deceived customers about complex mortgage-related securities it sold to them in 2007 just as the housing market was souring, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday.

The Supreme Court has handed a firm rebuke to eight state attorneys general — including New York's — in a case that touched on climate change and business.

The number of landlords failing to make their mortgage payments is up sharply in New York City, according to a new study from NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

A year after the city began issuing letter grades to eateries based on their sanitary inspection records, hundreds of restaurants still aren't displaying their grades to the public as required by law, according to the Department of Health.