A stock market rally at the end of last year helped Americans rebuild some of the wealth they lost during the recession -- a trend that carried over into 2012.
The Dow Jones industrial average on Tuesday finally reclaimed the ground it held before the carnage of the Great Recession -- bailouts, bank failures, layoffs by the million and a stock market panic that cut retirement savings in half.
A two-point gain was enough to push the S&P 500 index to its highest level since June 2008, three months the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the darkest days of the financial crisis.