Eight companies are looking to raise as much as $3.7 billion when they go public next week, the most activity the U.S. IPO market has seen in a single week in nearly two years.
Last month's daily average volume of 291,100 trades also fell compared with June of this year, with a decline of 8 percent on that basis.
Wanting to snuff out any rise in inflation expectations, the Fed could slow down purchases of either government debt or mortgage-backed securities.
Obama is ramping up his stimulus program this week even as his advisers are ramping down expectations about when the spending plan will stem a continuing rise in the nation's unemployment.
The Labor Department said Thursday that wholesale prices climbed 0.3% last month, a larger increase than the 0.1% that economists had expected.
The world's biggest computer chip maker is said to have used illegal sales tactics to shut out smaller rival AMD.
The insurance giant has reduced but not eliminated the risk that its failure could pose to the global economy despite getting more than $180 billion in federal bailout aid, Edward Liddy is expected to tell Congress today.
Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke threatened to oust Bank of America's management if the bank tried to back out of buying the investment bank, says letter from New York attorney general.
The Labor Department said Wednesday that consumer prices edged down 0.1 percent last month as a drop in energy prices offset the biggest rise in tobacco prices in more than a decade. It was a better performance than the 0.1 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index that economists had expected.
