(Reuters) - The United States needs to use fiscal as well as monetary policy to boost the economy if it wants to convince cash-rich corporations to start hiring and investing, Bob Doll, chief equity strategist of BlackRock Inc said on Thursday at the Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit. Doll, who helps manage BlackRock's more than $3.3 trillion in assets, said companies are more likely to raise their dividends or buy back shares than invest and hire because they don't know what policy to expect from Washington.

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(Reuters) - Groupon seeks to go public in October or November, people familiar with the matter told the New York Times on Wednesday, a week after the daily deals website put its IPO on hold for a few weeks as it waited to ride out global market turmoil. The company, which had postponed a roadshow to attract potential investors early this month, could go ahead with the presentations by mid-October, sources told the NY Times.

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(Reuters) - Stocks fell on Wednesday, with the Dow and S&P 500 extending losses and the Nasdaq turning negative after an Austrian parliamentary committee failed to approve the European Financial Stability Facility upgrade. The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was down 94.57 points, or 0.85 percent, at 11,011.28. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX was down 8.15 points, or 0.69 percent, at 1,164.72. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC was down 7.80 points, or 0.31 percent, at 2,524.35.

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(Reuters) - Moody's cut the credit ratings of two French banks on Wednesday because of their exposure to Greece's debt, highlighting growing risks to Europe's financial sector from a deepening euro zone sovereign debt crisis. But the euro and European stocks were lifted by an announcement by the head of the European Commission that it would soon present options for issuing a common euro zone bond, despite huge political hurdles especially in Germany.

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(Reuters) - Growth in retail sales stalled in August, hurt by a pitched battle over spending in Congress and raising fresh questions about the country's ability to steer clear of a double-dip recession. Sales were unchanged from a month earlier, a Commerce Department report showed on Wednesday.

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(Reuters) - The European Commission will soon present options on how the euro zone might issue bonds jointly, its President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Wednesday, but warned there was no simple solution to a debt crisis that threatens Europe's economic and political future. Speaking to the European Parliament, Barroso said Europe faced its most serious challenge in a generation.

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(Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday tried to shore up confidence in Europe's ability to solve its escalating debt crisis, saying they had the financial and economic capacity to do so. "There is no chance that the major countries of Europe will let their institutions be at risk in the eyes of the market. There is not a chance," Geithner told CNBC television.

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(Reuters) - Large U.S. corporations are pressuring Congress and the White House to exempt overseas corporate profits from taxes, a policy shift that critics say would hurt the economy and increase the federal deficit. A fight is shaping up between supporters of territorial taxation, as this policy proposal is known, and opponents who favor a different reform -- repealing a tax law that allows corporations to defer paying taxes on their overseas income.

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(Reuters) - Applications for U.S. home mortgages rose last week for the first time in a month as interest rates tumbled even further, an industry group said on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and home purchase demand, rose 6.3 percent in the week ended September 9 compared to the week before.

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(Reuters) - A euro zone row over collateral to back loans to Greece has lost its "explosive" power under a plan that would let every member country decide for itself whether to make use of the facility, Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter told Reuters. Asked if there had been a breakthrough on the collateral issue, she said: "Some things have been prepared at the technical level. I don't think this is explosive any more."

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