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8B Daily News – Wednesday, August 31, 2011 NEW YORK (AP) — The mere discussion of more economic stimulus from the Federal Reserve was enough to send stocks higher Tuesday. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 20 points, its third day of gains. Stocks rise on hopes for more stimulus from Fed Wall Street Minutes from the Fed's latest policy meeting on Aug. 9 showed that cen- tral bank officials dis- cussed a variety of options to bolster the economy, including buy- ing more Treasury bonds. In the end, they decided to keep interest rates low until at least mid-2013. The news that more aggressive action was being considered gave investors a reason to buy stocks. ''They want to see stimulus and they hope stocks will go higher,'' said Joseph Saluzzi, co- head of stock trading at Themis Trading. The Federal Reserve has purchased Treasury bonds twice in the past as a way to keep long-term interest rates low. The Fed's first bond-buying program was in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis. The second, announced last August, helped to push the Dow up 28 percent through April 29. Lower interest rates on bonds give investors an incentive to move money out of bonds and into stocks and other assets. Stocks were mixed for much of the day Tuesday after an index of con- sumer confidence plunged in August to the lowest level since April 2009. Trading volume was also lighter than nor- mal because many investors are on vacation. The Dow Jones indus- trial average rose 20.70 points, or 0.2 percent, to close at 11,559.95 Tues- day. The Dow was down as many as 109 points five minutes after the con- sumer confidence report came out at 10 a.m. It traded mixed for most of the day and turned higher in the last hour of trading. The Dow has risen for three days straight, and six out of the last seven. Boeing Co. rose 2.2 percent, the most of the 30 companies in the Dow, after the aircraft maker said it received approval from its board to build a version of its workhorse 737 jet with a redesigned engine. That should help it compete better with rival Airbus. The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 2.84 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,212.92. The Nasdaq composite index rose 14, or 0.6 per- cent, to 2,576.11. Companies that rely most heavily on consumer spending had some of the biggest losses. Retailers Kohl's Corp. and Lowe's Cos. each fell 2.2 percent. Best Buy Co. Inc. fell 0.8 percent. The sharp fall in the measure of how U.S. con- sumers feel about the economy could mean weaker sales for retailers and makers of consumer goods like clothes and shoes. Retailers are in the midst of the critical back- to-school shopping sea- son, which can account for as much as 25 percent of their annual revenue. Trading volume, or the number of shares bought and sold, was lower than usual. About 3.97 billion shares exchanged hands on the New York Stock Exchange, almost a third less than Aug. 8, when stocks plunged on mas- widely in August. The Dow was down as much as 7.4 percent for the year on Aug. 10, but it is now down 0.2 percent. On Monday the Dow soared 254 points, its fourth- largest gain this year. Insurers rose the most after it became clear the damage from Tropical Storm Irene wasn't as bad as analysts had feared. Bond prices have also sive volume after the U.S. government's credit rating was downgraded. Low volume is worri- some because it suggests that relatively few investors are driving the stock market's gains or losses. That creates the risk for bigger price swings, said Stephen Carl, principal and head of equity trading at The Williams Capital Group. A lack of volume also indicates that some investors don't believe that stocks are worth buy- ing right now. Stocks have swung been volatile. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note briefly fell to a record low below 2 per- cent on Aug. 18 on a very weak report on manufac- turing in the Northeast from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve. On Tuesday, the yield fell to 2.18 percent, down from 2.27 percent late Mon- day. Obama looks to spur private sector hiring WASHINGTON (AP) — Limited in his ability to create jobs through direct spending, President Barack Obama is consider- ing measures to encourage the private sector to free up its cash reserves and hire more workers to ease the nation's unemployment crush. As Obama prepares to unveil a new jobs agenda next week, his aides are reviewing options that would provide tax incen- tives to employers who expand their payrolls. That approach is a more indirect effort to spur the economy and relies less on govern- ment intervention and mas- sive public works projects. Among the proposals circulating in the White House is a $33 billion tax credit that Obama first pro- posed early last year but that Congress whittled into a smaller one-year pack- age. Under one version of the plan, employers would receive a tax credit of up to $5,000, subtracted from their share of federal pay- roll taxes, for every net new hire. White House officials caution that the overall jobs plan is still subject to change. The tax credit, however, is a relatively untested idea. Congress passed a version in March 2010, known as the HIRE Act, which provided $13 billion NORTHERN HISPANIC LATINO COALITION Presents the 15th Annual Latino FIESTA & FAMILY FAIR Sunday, September 11, 2011 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM INDEPENDENCE DAY Anderson River Park Amphitheater, Anderson, CA FREE TO THE PUBLIC ATTENTION VENDORS: The deadline is 8/31/11 ($20 late fee after 8/31) Call Marge, 241-7833 or get application at http://northernhispaniclatinocoalition.org in tax credits to qualified employers who hired new workers. But there is no government data to track its success. ''The HIRE Act was very small,'' said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics and an occasional adviser to Democrats and Republi- cans. ''It really didn't add to payrolls.'' ''It would have to be bigger,'' he added. ''Some- thing more along the lines that the Obama administra- tion proposed in 2010.'' 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Seek- ing to blunt congressional partisanship, Obama will be joined by the leaders of two occasionally warring factions — AFL-CIO Pres- ident Richard Trumka and David Chavern, chief oper- ating officer of the U.S.