Dow drops sharply and closes below 15,000

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

A sell-off in stocks accelerated Thursday, as major indexes fell 1% while Washington remains paralyzed and the nation approaches the deadline for raising the U.S. debt ceiling.

The Dow ended below 15,000, a psychologically important level, for the first time in almost a month. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 also declined sharply.

Meetings at the White House between congressional leaders and President Obama have failed to produce a breakthrough. Thursday marked Day 3 of the government shutdown, and Washington gave no sign of preventing a fourth. It's making investors jittery.CNNMoney's Fear & Greed index even briefly slid into Extreme Fear mode.

Thursday's losses also meant the Dow and S&P 500 have dropped for nine of the past 11 trading days,

"I think probably at the beginning of the week people didn't think it would take so long to sort out," said David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Markets in London. "The fact that it's dragged on is making people a little bit nervous."

Doug DePietro, an equity trader at investment bank Evercore, noted that the S&P 500 also broke below its 50-day moving average, a key technical level that triggered additional selling by institutional investors.

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Inside Obama's Game Plan For The Debt Limit

WASHINGTON -- Three senior Obama administration officials have made it abundantly clear that the president has no interest in budging from his position on the government shutdown or the looming debt ceiling fight.

The officials met with a handful of columnists and reporters on Thursday morning on condition that they not be named or quoted. They said President Barack Obama feels as strongly about this issue as he has about anything else during his time in office, including passing health care reform.

The meeting came the day after congressional leaders and the president met in the White House in hopes of finding a path forward on the dual budget fights. That meeting ended without an agreement. And the fact that both sides continued a media blitz the morning after suggests that a resolution remains far off.

What's driving the president, his aides stressed, is a belief that he needs to reorient the balance of powers within the federal government. The three officials repeatedly argued that the losing party in a national election couldn't be allowed to essentially nullify the results of that election through budget sabotage.

And so lines have to be drawn -- not just to affect the policy outcomes of the next few weeks, but to set a precedent for future negotiations.

All of which raises the question: How does the current standoff end? If House Republicans won't pass a deal to end the shutdown or raise the debt limit without concessions, and the president refuses to give in, is default inevitable? Will the government ever reopen?

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Wild car chase ends with suspect shot to death near U.S. Capitol

Washington (CNN) -- She had a 1-year-old child inside and apparently was unarmed.

Instead, the motorist's black Infiniti, according to authorities, itself became a weapon Thursday afternoon, first striking a security barrier and U.S. Secret Service officer near the White House before hurtling down some of the capital's most famous streets, police cruisers in pursuit.

Dramatic video taken minutes later near the U.S. Capitol showed the vehicle backing into a police vehicle before the chase resumed. Gunshots rang through the traffic circle. The motorist was shot by police just a few blocks away.

The woman died. The child was safe and in protective custody. Two officers were injured. Police vehicles were damaged.

And a city heretofore fixated on a partial government shutdown was left with unanswered questions.

Why did this happen? Why did the woman drive away from the White House and toward Capitol Hill?

While U.S. Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine said there appeared to be no evidence of terrorism, Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier said, "This does not appear to be in any way an accident."

Officials, who called it an "isolated incident," were tight-lipped about the suspect and did not name her at an evening briefing.

The early hours of the investigation turned northward Thursday night.

A task force prepared to execute a search warrant at the woman's Stamford, Connecticut, residence, law enforcement sources said. Police and bomb squad units surrounded an apartment complex.

Authorities wanted to speak with the suspect's relatives in Brooklyn, New York, but were turned away, federal law enforcement sources told CNN.

The chase created a chaotic scene of blaring sirens, locked-down lawmakers and bystanders hitting the dirt.

House and Senate sessions were immediately suspended, with legislators ordered to take cover and keep away from windows. Police also closed Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.

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Lessons For The Obamacare Rollout, Courtesy Of Massachusetts

Today marks a milestone on the nation's long march toward universal health coverage: the launch of online marketplaces, called exchanges, designed to help people find insurance they can afford.

It's an idea pioneered by Massachusetts seven years ago. People here call their program a success, and say the state's exchange was an indispensable factor.

Those involved since those working in low-wage jobs who will qualify for an expansion of MassHealth the beginning say the Massachusetts health insurance exchange, called the Connector, was the brainchild of former Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican.

Glen Shor, who once ran the Connector and is now the state's secretary of administration and finance, is confident that the nation will follow Massachusetts' lead.

"As the [federal] law begins to be implemented," Shor says, "people will see and feel its positive effects. They'll be able to see through some of the rhetoric and spin."

When the Connector opened for business in late 2006, people signed up much faster than projected. Within a year there were 367,000 newly insured citizens.

"Enrollment was fast," Shor says. "One of the clear lessons of the Massachusetts experience is that people want affordable health insurance."

Today, 97 percent of the state's 6.6 million people have it — the highest coverage rate of anywhere in America.

And Shor says Obamacare will bring another 45 000 new people into the fold —, the state's Medicaid program.

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The US healthcare paradox: we like the Affordable Care Act but fear Obamacare

President Obama's healthcare law is hated and loved by some so much that they are willing to shut down the government over it. I'm not sure I've ever seen so much passion over an issue about which so few (myself included) know as much as we should.

I wrote about this divide when Obamacare was in front of the US supreme court. Americans were opposed to "Obamacare", or the Affordable Care Act, yet they were in favor of many of its provisions. Not surprisingly, Americans lacked knowledge of what exactly the law did.

So, as the political fight has intensified, on the eve of implementation of one of the ACA's key provisions, the creation of new health insurance pools, how much has changed? Does the noisy debate on the ACA mean Americans are better-informed than before about Obamacare? Here are five ways Americans' opinions about Obamacare have and have not evolved over the past year.

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White House Dismisses GOP's Piecemeal Government Shutdown Plan

WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - The White House rejected a Republican plan to reopen portions of the U.S. government on Tuesday as the first shutdown in 17 years closed landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and threw hundreds of thousands of federal employees out of work.

The quick dismissal offered no sign that President Barack Obama and Republicans can soon end a standoff over health care that has sidelined everything from trade negotiations to medical research and raised new concerns about Congress's ability to perform its most basic duties. An even bigger battle looms in coming weeks, when Congress must raise the debt limit or risk a U.S. default that could roil global markets.

As Republicans in the House of Representatives huddled to consider their next move, Obama accused them of taking the government hostage in order to sabotage his signature health care law, the most ambitious U.S. social program in five decades.

"They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans," Obama said in the White House Rose Garden.

Republicans in the House of Representatives view the Affordable Care Act as a dangerous extension of government power and have coupled their efforts to undermine it with continued government funding. The Democratic-controlled Senate has repeatedly rejected those efforts.

Spending authority for much of the government expired at midnight on Monday (0400 GMT), but that did not prevent the Obama administration from unveiling the health-insurance exchanges that form the centerpiece of the law.

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Obama blames Republican 'ideological crusade' for shutdown

Washington (CNN) -- Republicans forced an unnecessary budget crisis in their single-minded effort to dismantle health care reforms, President Barack Obama said Tuesday as frustration spread across Washington and the country on the first day of a government shutdown.

In some of his strongest criticism so far, Obama said the shutdown intended to hinder government efforts to provide health insurance to 15% of the U.S. population that doesn't have coverage, adding it was "strange that one party would make keeping people uninsured the centerpiece of their agenda."

The stalemate in Congress that caused the shutdown continued with Senate Democrats voting for a fourth time to reject a spending plan by House Republicans that sought to undermine Obamacare.

This time, the House proposal also included a call for a conference committee to seek a compromise. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Democrats turned down the package because it amounted to extortion by Republicans to force concessions on Obama's signature health care reforms.

Reid said the Senate wants to negotiate a budget with the House, "but not with the government closed.

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