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American consumers have shown about as much appetite for the $1 coin as kids do their spinach. They may not know what's best for them either. Congressional auditors say doing away with dollar bills entirely and replacing them with dollar coins could save taxpayers some $4.4 billion over the next 30 years.

A new report by the Washington-based Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution calculates states spend a combined $1.7 billion annually on standardized testing.

On the ice, the National Hockey League has never been more competitive than over the course of its last collective bargaining agreement, which began with the 2005-06 season. A different team has won the Stanley Cup each season, ranging from big-market clubs like Los Angeles and Chicago to small ones such as Pittsburgh and Raleigh. A total of 12 different teams reached the finals during the seven-year CBA.

Cyber Monday online sales beat forecasts by nearly half a billion dollars. ComScore on Monday predicted that Cyber Monday would generate $1.5 billion in online sales, but according to Adobe, the shopping day ended up raking in $1.98 billion, which was a 17% increase compared to last year.

Celebrities have long dabbled in design, but with the growth of TV shows and websites that follow everything celebrities say, wear and do, interest in their clothing lines has risen in recent years. North America revenue from celebrity clothing lines, excluding merchandise linked to athletes, rose 6 percent last year to an historic peak of $7.58 billion in 2011, according to the latest figures available by The Licensing Letter, an industry trade.

Superstorm Sandy ran up a $42 billion bill on New York and the state and New York City congressional leaders are preparing big requests for federal disaster aid....

The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc has found a buyer for its textbook business, a unit that once steadied its results against the ups and downs of financial markets faced by its Standard & Poor's rating agency. Private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC will buy McGraw-Hill's educational publishing unit for $2.5 billion, McGraw-Hill said on Monday.

The offerings include $35 billion in two-year notes and $29 billion in seven-year securities.

Hewlett-Packard Co. said that a British company it bought for $9.7 billion last year lied about its finances, resulting in a massive write-down of the value of the business. CEO Meg Whitman avoided calling it a fraud, but said Tuesday that there were "serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations at Autonomy Corporation PLC."

The Federal Housing Administration, which has played a crucial role in stabilizing the housing market, said it ended September with $16.3 billion in projected losses -- a possible prelude to a taxpayer bailout.