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Markets sink on fiscal cliff worries, Instagram backs down, and more in our roundup of the business stories that are making news and driving opinion

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1. STOCKS DIVE ON FISCAL CLIFF FEARS AS PLAN B DIES

U.S. stocks fell early Friday after conservatives rejected House Republican leaders' proposal to avert the fiscal cliff by extending Bush-era tax breaks for all Americans making less than $1 million a year. With House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) unable to get his allies to back his so-called Plan B, investors feared there was less hope than ever that the GOP could strike a deal with President Obama, who campaigned on a promise to let tax rates rise for households with more than $250,000 in income and now says he's willing to go as high as $400,000. The Dow was down 100 points in early trading. [Reuters]

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.