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The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) have reached an agreement to avert a strike that could have shut down the unloading of 14 container cargo at ports up and down the United States’ East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, according to CNBC. The two parties will get 30 more days to resolve their differences, which have been ongoing since March. That would have marked the second such strike in about a month, after a labor dispute shut down the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in late November. It would have also been the first time East Coast ports have shut down en masse in 35 years.

What to watch for today

In 2012, journalists and investors took to Twitter to express their feelings and frustrations about the financial world. We wracked our brains to pick out some of the best, most hilarious hashtags of the year.

Perhaps the least talked-about piece of the “fiscal cliff”—the austerity measures that will hit the United States in the beginning of 2013—is now coming into focus: a new debate about raising the country’s debt ceiling. Congress allows the Treasury to borrow up to a certain point, but given the government’s not-insignificant deficits, legislators have had to raise the debt ceiling 40 times since 1980.

What to watch for today

The end of the year is accompanied by a flurry of predictions from financial analysts about what the new year will bring. 2012 has been a year of political gridlock in Europe, topped off by the end-of-year fiscal cliff debates in the US and the election of monetary policy activist Shinzo Abe in Japan.

This article has been corrected.

What to watch for today

General Motors announced Wednesday that it would buy back 200 million shares of common stock from the US Treasury for $5.5 billion, bringing it closer to getting off the government assistance it has needed since 2009. The US government gave the large automaker a total of $49.5 billion in 2009 to stave off its collapse and save jobs while it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In return, the US received a 60.4% stake in the company. The government has already sold off some of its GM stock, and—before the buyback—held about 500 million shares in the company.

Everyone wants a piece of Europe’s distressed debt pie. But investing is hardly easy.

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A mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, has—as of the most recent police statements—resulted in the deaths of 27 people, including the gunman. Twenty of those victims were children.

US industrial production—a composite of manufacturing, mining, utilities, and activity in other business sectors—surged in November, rising 1.1%. That far surpassed most of the optimistic estimates from Wall Street; consensus there was that industrial production would rise by 0.3%.

European heads of state are meeting today in Brussels for their latest bout of dialogue on the EU crisis. European Council president Herman van Rompuy writes, “The main purpose of this meeting will be for us to discuss a specific and timebound roadmap for the completion of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)”—which, if taken literally, would include a timeline for debt mutualization, the forfeiture of some national sovereignty, region-wide taxes, and a central monetary area budget. But we’ve been through enough of these euro crisis beer-drinking sessions to know we shouldn’t expect quite that much.

The euro crisis has hit Spain hard. The country saw the construction of 675,00 homes per year from 1997 to 2006—more than France, Germany, and the UK combined, which together have over four times Spain’s population. The resultant housing bubble is shaping up to be far worse than the one that popped in the US in 2006. At the market’s worst in March 2012, US home prices had fallen 35% from their 2006 peak. Spanish homes are worth 27% less than they were back in 2007, but Spain’s recession just began this year, and a protracted euro-area recession looks like it’s just beginning.

Continuing—and possibly worsening—doldrums in Europe have forced Asian companies to find new trade partners elsewhere. The obvious approach? Upping their focus on the US, which is making progress toward better economic health while Europe appears to be slipping deeper into recession.

Today the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) authorized its workers on the US east coast and in the Gulf of Mexico to strike if they can’t reach an agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) by the start of next year. That would effectively stop container traffic from moving at 14 ports, including the Port of New York and New Jersey. It would be the first time such a far-reaching strike has happened in 35 years.

FedEx expects to ship some 19 million packages on December 10, 2012, its busiest day of the year and a new record for the company. That’s about 10% more packages than FedEx shipped on its busiest day last year.

Japan’s economy fell into technical recession this year, after it’s GDP fell in two consecutive quarters. The data don’t look pretty: GDP contracted a full 3.5% in the second and third quarters of the year. It’s the fifth recession in 15 years, and many analysts expect it to continue into the fourth quarter.

The Republicans’ loss in the US presidential election last month has brought some of them to believe that they should take new steps to win the country’s fast-growing Hispanic population, many of which are first- or second-generation American immigrants. That includes making laws that better account for a population of some 11.1 million illegal immigrants.

This year hasn’t been going very well for the Spanish. With a quarter of the population out of work, it’s hard for them to afford costly, memory-killing substances like whisky and brandy. The solution? Drink more beer!

European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi sent the value of the euro reeling this morning when he announced downward revisions to the central bank’s growth projections through 2014. The bank now believes that the 17-nation euro area’s total GDP will grow at a rate between -0.6% and -0.4% for 2012, between -0.9% and 0.3% for 2013 and between 0.2% and 2.2% for 2014. He also decided—contrary to some analyst expectations—to leave the bank’s target interest rate on hold at 0.75%.

A new round of legal statutes is coming in 2013 that could motivate global, multinational banks to retreat and focus on their home markets. Following up on the financial crises, governments in the US and Europe have been considering legislation that could pose hurdles for foreign banks.

The near-total closure of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which ended today after a week-long strike, could have crippled the flow of goods into the US. But it could be the start of new battles ahead for major US ports.