NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The U.S. Postal Service renewed its pleas for congressional support Thursday as the floundering agency reported another massive quarterly loss.

The Postal Service announced that it sustained a net loss of $3.3 billion in the last three months of 2011, as declining mail volumes and mounting benefit costs continue to weigh on its business.

In the previous fiscal year, the Postal Service lost $5.1 billion and said its losses would have been roughly $10.6 billion if not for the passage of legislation postponing a $5.5 billion payment required to pre-fund retiree health benefits.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — U.S. stocks rallied Friday, as investors cheered a much stronger-than-expected jobs report.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) gained 157 points, or 1.2%, the S&P 500 (SPX) added 19 points, or 1.5%, and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) increased 46 points, or 1.6%.

The rally pushed pushed the Dow, up more than 5% in 2012, to its highest level since May 2008. The Nasdaq, up more than 11% for the year, climbed to its highest level since December 2000. The S&P 500 has gained almost 7% this year, and finished at a six-month high.

The rally was sparked by the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, which showed that the U.S. economy added 243,000 jobs in January, far exceeding expectations. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.3%, the lowest since February 2009.

BANGKOK (AP) — Oil fell to near $98 a barrel Monday in Asia as the crude market waited for the outcome of Greece’s negotiations with creditors on a deal to cut the face value of its debt by half.

Benchmark crude for March delivery was down 15 cents at $98.19 a barrel at late afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $2.21 to end at $98.33 per barrel in New York on Friday.

Brent crude was down 35 cents at $109.51 a barrel on the ICE futures exchange in London.

The housing market ended the year on a positive note with strong sales in December, but a glut of unsold homes will likely push prices lower through much of this year, forecasters said Friday.

Sales of existing homes hit an 11-month high last month and the number of properties on the market fell to the lowest level in nearly seven years, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Unseasonably warm weather may have helped boost sales, but analysts said a strengthening job market and record low mortgage rates should buoy housing in coming months. Still, they were troubled by the high level of “distressed homes” for sale, including short sales of underwater properties or sales of foreclosed properties. Nearly one-third of existing-home sales were distressed last month, according to the Realtors.

But ask them how they got that way. The employees of one McDonald’s are not happy. They have to run labor at the percent that they did before min. wage began going up. I can see them making money, but not at the way they want to cut help and run with less help and more business.

(Reuters) – McDonald’s Corp is poised to report robust December sales from U.S. restaurants open at least 13 months, according to a survey of U.S. franchisees.

Thirty McDonald’s franchisees — who together operate 212 of the more than 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the United States — reported an aggregate 9.1 percent rise in same-restaurant sales for December, Janney Capital Markets analyst Mark Kalinowski said in a client note.

The analyst, whose surveys are closely followed by investors, boosted his forecast for U.S. December same-restaurant sales growth to match results from the poll.

SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Group, which includes Samsung Electronics Co, said on Tuesday it is raising its 2012 investment to a record $41.4 billion, underscoring the widening gulf between the dominant South Korean conglomerate and its faltering competitors.

Best known for making massive investments in new technologies ahead of rivals, Samsung is now banking on logic chips and OLED displays to repeat its roaring success in flash chips, computer memory chips and LCD flat-screens, even as a gloomy global economic and IT spending outlook forces its peers to be conservative in spending.

When it comes to foreigners looking to plant roots in the United States, Florida is the hot spot, especially among Cubans, Haitians and Colombians.

The Sunshine State is the most popular among foreign home buyers with 31 percent of all home purchases made there coming from foreign residents, according to a study by Credit Sesame, an online credit and loan management firm, that used National Association of Realtors’ data.

Foreign buyers represented $82 billion of the U.S. real estate market in 2010, while in 2009 they represented only $66 billion.

(Reuters) – Eastman Kodak Co is in advanced talks with Citigroup Inc to obtain financing that would be used if the money-losing photography company files for bankruptcy protection, Bloomberg News said on Thursday, citing three people familiar with the matter.

Advisers to Kodak are also lining up a “stalking horse” that would become the lead bidder for a patent portfolio should it be auctioned via the Chapter 11 process, the newswire said, citing one of the people.

Neither Kodak nor Citigroup immediately responded to requests for comment.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Close to 15% of federal taxes — or $385 billion — went unpaid in 2006, according to new estimates by the IRS.

That’s the net tax gap number — meaning what didn’t get paid even after the $65 billion the IRS managed to collect through audits.

And it’s the closest proxy policymakers have to the country’s annual revenue shortfall, said Mark Luscomb, the principal federal tax analyst at CCH, a tax information publisher.

What’s driving the shortfall? A whopping 84% of the total tax gap is due to underreporting of income by corporations, small businesses and individuals.

If you’re the type of person who likes to wait until the last minute to file your taxes, congratulations: You have two more days to procrastinate.

The Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday that 2011 federal tax returns will not be due until Tuesday, April 17 this year.

That’s because April 15, traditionally tax day, falls on a Sunday this year. In addition, Monday, April 16, is Emancipation Day, a holiday in the District of Columbia.

This is the second year in a row that Uncle Sam has given taxpayers extra time to file.

The actress who played tomboy Elly May Clampett on 1960s television show “The Beverly Hillbillies” has settled her lawsuit against Mattel over a Barbie doll based on her character.

Actress Donna Douglas, now 78, sued the toy company in May as well as the consumer products division of CBS Corp. seeking a minimum of $75,000 in damages.

Her complaint said Mattel was “engaging in the unauthorized use” of her name, likeness and image to promote and sell the “Elly May” Barbie.

Consumers who were victims of mortgage discrimination could get anywhere from $500 to thousands of dollars each as a result of a settlement announced Wednesday by the Justice Department.

Under the deal, Bank of America’s Countrywide Financial unit is paying a record $335 million to settle civil charges that it discriminated against minority home buyers.

More than 200,000 individuals were affected and could be eligible for payments from the fund.

Affected consumers include two different groups of victims who will be eleligible for two different types of damages, said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, who spoke with Justice Department officials abou the settlement.