The Federal Reserve's aggressive action this week to boost the economy sent stocks soaring Thursday to their highest level in two years as investors expressed renewed confidence that someone in Washington was finally giving the sluggish recovery a lift.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up nearly 2 percent, erasing the last of the breathtaking losses that followed the failure of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and the resulting panic over a possible collapse of the global financial system. Other major U.S. stock indexes were also up sharply.

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