President Obama meets with Tim Cook, others

President Barack Obama spoke with prominent business leaders over the weekend to discuss his plan to avert the financial crisis that is looming early next year. According to Reuters, the list of senior corporate leaders with which Obama spoke include JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, investor Warren Buffet and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

"The president reached out to and spoke with each of these business leaders as a part of his continuing conversations and outreach on the need to find a balanced deficit-reduction solution that protects the middle class and continues to move our economy forward," said a White House official in a statement provided to Reuters.

The president and Congress are in last-minute negotiations to avoid a so-called fiscal cliff that could send the US back into a recession in 2013. The fiscal cliff is the result of a $109 billion in spending cuts that go in effect on January 1, 2013 and an increase in individual income taxes as the Bush-era tax cuts expire.