Economic Crisis | featured news

Legislation to rein in credit card practices and eliminate sudden rate hikes and late fees that have entangled millions of American consumers is getting closer to becoming law, bolstered by presidential pressure and the backdrop of economic calamity.

Stocks climbed as companies continued to report stronger-than-forecast results, though new data offered mixed signals on an economic recovery.

The government reported that gross domestic product shrank at a 6.1 percent annual rate, worse than economists expected, dampening hopes that the slowdown was easing.

General Motors Corp. said it will cut 21,000 U.S. factory jobs by next year, phase out its storied Pontiac brand and ask the government to take more than half its stock in exchange for half of GM's government debt as part of a major restructuring that would leave current shareholders holding just 1 percent of the company.

The financial crisis is the defining challenge of Barack Obama’s presidency — and he knows it. NBC's Savannah Guthrie says the president's advisers are happy to list a flurry of accomplishments in the first 100 days.

The sense of "unremitting freefall" in the U.S. economy has ended and the picture is no longer completely negative, but rather mixed, President Barack Obama's economic adviser Lawrence Summers said on Sunday.

Finance chiefs from the G7 powers said on Friday the global economy may be pulling out of the depths of a recession although recovery was not yet assured, and they pledged to make certain big financial firms are sound.

The number of newly laid off U.S. workers filing claims for jobless benefits rose last week and sales of previously owned homes fell in March, data showed on Thursday, indicating the 16-month old recession was far from over.

Overseas aid and loans are one way Beijing is wielding its new role as a global financial leader.

A New York man who killed his wife, two daughters and himself in a Maryland hotel room may have had serious financial problems, police said.