NEW YORK — Grim signals about consumer spending ripped through the markets Friday, sending stocks tumbling as investors raced for safe havens. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index and the Nasdaq composite index ended with losses for October, breaking a streak of seven months of gains.

The Center for Responsive Politics reports that total federal lobbying expenditures topped $849 million in the third quarter, setting a new record since firms began filing reports quarterly. The health sector is the year’s top lobbying spender, pouring $396 million to lobbying federal lawmakers on health care reform since January — an increase of six percent compared to the same period last year. CRP reports that the total year-to-date spending is now a staggering $2.5 billion.


 
 Grim signals about consumer spending ripped through the markets Friday, sending stocks tumbling as investors raced for safe havens. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index and the Nasdaq composite index ended with losses for October, breaking a streak of seven straight months of gains. The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 250 points, erasing a 200-point gain Thursday and ending the month flat.

Senator Sanders Unfiltered is a weekly web program produced by Brave New Films . Stay up-to-date with “Unfiltered” on Facebook . Follow Bernie on Twitter

New York Times : Hundreds of exhibits supporting a scathing report on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s past investigations of Bernard L. Madoff were released on Friday by the author of the report, the agency’s inspector general, H. David Kotz.

Everyone realizes that we have to do something about “too big to fail.” But there are two fundamentally different paths: one threatens the very existence of the billionaire bailout society and the other makes it permanent. The obvious way to end “too big to fail” is to break up large financial institutions so that they are “small enough to fail.” Paul Volker, not a radical by any means, argues for this.


 
 Nasdaq serves up its own social-networking site, launches iPhone application; carbon trading tech Two technology developments came out of the Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. this past week: a new social network and an iPhone application.