Asia Stocks Jump as US Staves Off 'Fiscal Cliff'.
Stock markets in Asia registered relief Wednesday over the U.S. congressional vote to stop hundreds of billions of dollars in automatic tax increases and spending cuts that risked plunging the world's biggest economy into recession.
Benchmarks in Australia and Hong Kong boomeranged on the first trading day of the year, just before Congress passed an emergency measure to avert much of the impact of tax-and-spending changes that were so steep they were dubbed the "fiscal cliff." Asian markets had slipped on Monday, fearing that negotiations over the measure might collapse.
Economists have been warning that the tax increases and spending cuts could take a chunk out of the U.S. economy; some experts predicted financial markets would plunge unless a clear-cut deal was reached.
Instead, markets in Asia blessed the stopgap measure approved late Tuesday in Washington to retroactively counter some of the "fiscal cliff" effects. The bill Congress passed awaits President Barack Obama's signature.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/01/02/world/asia/ap-world-markets.html?hp
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