The stock market is supposed to be a leading indicator, predicting what happens next. But the rally doesn't mean the nation's economic woes are over.

Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral called for a national boycott of Idaho potatoes to protest Idaho's plan to kill wolves in September. That could affect Idaho growers, who produce about one-third of the potatoes consumed in the United States.

President Obama wants to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency when Congress returns from its recess. The American Bankers Association wants bank CEOs to ask their employees to send letters to members of Congress opposing the new legislation.

Americans are angry at Wall Street, and rightly so. First the financial industry plunged us into economic crisis, then it was bailed out at taxpayer expense. And now, with the economy still deeply depressed, the industry is paying itself gigantic bonuses.

The firms take billions of dollars out of the U.S. healthcare wallet as profits, while imposing enormous administrative costs on doctors, hospitals, employers and patients. They've introduced complexity into the system at every level. Why protect them?

American banks were just bailed out by us, the American tax payers, and some have not even paid us back yet. However, they are giving out 32.6 billion dollars in bonuses. They need to be held accountable not only for their actions that helped lead us

-- Regulators on Friday shut down banks in Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma and Illinois, boosting to 69 the number of federally insured banks to fail this year amid the pressures of the weak economy and mounting loan defaults

About 1 in 10 Californians with a home loan is now in default, and there's growing evidence that the mortgage meltdown is spreading to commercial real estate

For several years Intuit lobbyists have tried to kill a state program that allows some California residents, mostly low-income taxpayers, to have the state tax board fill out their tax returns for free -- competition for Intuit's popular TurboTax software

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Bank of America Corp. could eventually shrink its 6,100-branch network by about 10 percent as consumers utilize other methods of banking, a company spokesman said Tuesday