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Target Corp. acknowledged early Thursday that there was a massive security breach of its customers' credit and debit card accounts starting the day before Thanksgiving and extending at least to Dec. 15 — the heart of the holiday shopping season.

"Approximately 40 million credit and debit card accounts may have been impacted," the retailer said. The hacking involved not only Target-issued cards but those from other issuers as well. The size of the breach puts it in the upper echelon of recent hackings into consumers' payment accounts. As The Wall Street Journal reminds readers:

"One of the biggest incidents to hit the industry took place in 2007, when thieves stole card numbers and personal data on up to 90 million cards belonging to people who had shopped at stores owned by TJX, parent of T.J. Maxx, HomeGoods and other discount chains.

"In July, federal prosecutors unsealed criminal charges in an ongoing investigation of a group of people believed to have stolen more than 160 million credit and debit card numbers from companies including J.C. Penney Co., 7-Eleven, Nasdaq OMX Group, JetBlue Inc. and others over several years."

Michael Steinberg, a top portfolio manager at SAC Capital Advisors, has been found guilty of insider trading — the latest conviction stemming from a years-long federal investigation into the hedge fund's activities.

Steinberg was found guilty on five counts of conspiracy and securities fraud.

Reuters writes:

"Prosecutors said he traded on confidential information that was passed to him by an employee, who later admitted to swapping illegal tips with friends at other firms."

Time and again, business leaders say the one thing they want out of Washington is more certainty.

But rarely do they get their wish.

In recent years, business owners have found themselves wondering whether their government would default on its debts, shut down national parks, change tax rules, cancel supplier contracts, confirm key leaders at federal agencies or hike interest rates.

Finally on Wednesday, they saw policymakers take two big steps toward a more certain future.

First, the Federal Reserve said it would start to modestly taper its bond-buying stimulus. The changes will start in January — so now you know.

The second move came hours later when the Senate voted 64-36 to complete the first bipartisan budget agreement in years. The $1.01 trillion budget deal resolves many questions about automatic spending cuts and deficit-reduction plans.

That marked "a really big step forward," said John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo Securities.

Congress "lowered uncertainty about fiscal policy and the Fed lowered uncertainty about monetary policy," he said. As a result, "2014 will probably be a better year" for the economy, he added.

Putting a specific dollar figure on the cost of uncertainty isn't easy. But Silvia says there's no question businesses are less likely to hire when they don't know what is coming out of Washington.

"A lot of companies have government contracts," he noted. If they can't predict what's happening with spending cuts or shutdown threats, they can't hire. And all business leaders wonder: "Are you going to change the tax rules? What is the cost of financing? You can never get rid of all uncertainty, but you can reduce it," he said.

Apparently, investors agreed that greater certainty would be a good thing. They sent stock prices soaring, with the Dow Jones industrial average rising nearly 300 points on Wednesday.

Randall Stephenson, the chief executive officer of AT&T and chairman-elect of Business Roundtable, issued a statement saying Congress' approval of the budget should serve as a foundation for more compromises.

"Our leaders can build upon this agreement by moving forward with comprehensive tax reform, lifting the debt ceiling, reforming immigration and passing updated Trade Promotion Authority legislation to advance U.S. trade agreements," he said.

Business Leaders Decry The Economic Cost Of Uncertainty

More and more people are sending money from places like the United States to places like the Dominican Republic, according to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center.

Last month, my blogmate Kat Chow wrote about a New Jersey lottery winner named Pedro Quezada who sent a staggering $57 million of his winnings back to the Dominican Republic, where his family lives. Let's ignore the sheer dollar amount for a second to look at the larger global trend that Quezada represents: the growing amount of money flowing from high-income nations to what the World Bank classifies as "middle-income" nations.

Seventy percent of all "remittances" — the money that migrants send back to their countries of origin — goes to middle-income nations like the Dominican Republic, India and Mexico, according to a newly released Pew study that crunched numbers from the World Bank. (The World Bank classifies countries as middle-income if their per capita annual incomes fall between $1,036 and $12,615.) There are a few reasons for this: there are more middle-income nations in the world than before; those nations have more people in them; and more of those people are migrating to wealthier places.

Those immigrants are also heading to new destinations. In 1990, nations like Ukraine and India were among the countries with the world's largest immigrant populations. But they're not in the top 10 today, having been supplanted by places like the United Arab Emirates and Australia. (The United States had a far larger immigrant population than any country in the world, both then and now.)