When it comes to divvying up tax revenue, states with richer citizens end up footing the bill for those with lower per capita income.

Gold was flying off the shelf in midtown Manhattan as the price of gold reached an all-time high amid a wild week on Wall Street. And although experts say fear was driving gold prices — not the markets — there were no signs that the demand for the metal would abate, or that its price would significantly drop in the long term.

The slow down of the nation's economy does have at least one silver lining for anyone trying to get a mortgage or refinance an existing one.  The average interest rate for a 30-year fixed loan is now 4.43 percent according to HSH.com, a website that tracks mortgage lending across the country.

Gold appears to be wearing a kryptonite vest as everything around it crumbles. In the face of stocks free-falling globally, the economy continuing to struggle, and jobs still hard to come by for millions of Americans, gold is surging. Gold rose to over $1,700 an ounce yesterday, and many believe we could see it top $2,000. We look at the history of gold starting when it was a mere $35 an ounce back in 1970.

WNYC's Ilya Marritz from the Stock Exchange floor and Heidi Moore, Wall Street correspondent at Marketplace, talk about the sliding market and the growing worry about the American economy. MarketPsych managing partner Frank Murtha discusses the psychology behind our reactions to the hesitant economy.

After another volatile day on Wall Street, WNYC checked in with Erika Safran founder of Safran Wealth Advisors, to see how her clients — many retired and living off of their 401Ks and investments — are reacting.

The United States Federal Reserve's policy board announced today it will extend its period of extremely low interest rates through 2013 if not longer.

But don't expect that to solve the nation's financial woes.

A macroeconomic look at the U.S. economic slump makes it clear that the Fed is limited in what tools they have to fix the economy, and they have already used most of the tools at their disposal, without much success.

Texas Governor Rick Perry is preparing to jump into the race for the Republican nomination for president and his state's record on job creation will likely be a central focus of his campaign. A significant number of the jobs created in the U.S. over the past two years were created in Texas. This despite the widespread economic uncertainty and stubbornly high unemployment that's gripped the nation since the official end of the recession. However, in spite of its success at jobs creation, the state's unemployment number has remained stable.

The markets started off jittery yesterday and throughout the morning they just kept dropping. Later in the afternoon President Obama made an attempt to reassure Americans. During a statement at the White House he said, "Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we've always been and always be a triple A country."

Stock markets went into a free-fall yesterday, witnessing drops reminiscent of the great economic collapse of 2008 that the world has still yet to recover from. The S&P 500 saw all of its stock fall and the Dow Jones industrials fell 634.76 points, the sixth worst drop in over a century. How informative is the S&P downgrade? What can we take from their assessment of Washington?

How closely tied are the financial markets to the economy at large? In reaction to the country’s credit rating downgrade on Friday the markets had their worst day since the 2008 financial crisis yesterday as the Dow Jones dropped about 635 points and the Nasdaq was down 175. But do these numbers affect our country’s ability to create jobs? Do they have any meaningful relationship to consumer confidence, the arguable engine of our economy?

The markets continued their volatile ways yesterday with stocks taking a major nose-dive. Investors went into panic-mode trying to find anything safe to put their money into. Most put their money into the U.S. government's debt, but uncertainty remains. With so many factors affecting the global markets, how do we decide how investors will react and influence the markets?

Markets had severe case of the Monday's yesterday as stocks plunged. The Dow Jones industrials saw a drop of 634.76 points and not one stock in the Standard & Poor's 500 index saw an increase. In a word, investors were in a panic, desperately trying to find anything with value to put their money in.