Economy | featured news

The richest 1% of Americans now hold 25% of the country's wealth and more needs to be done to boost equality, says Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in Davos.

The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid fell last week to the lowest level in five years, evidence that employers are cutting fewer jobs and may step up hiring.

The fund said that growth is hardly expected to snap back to pre-crisis levels of 4.5 to 5.5 percent in the coming years.

Like any nation, China has a host of problems, both societal and economic. It's getting older. It has yet to develop large portions of the west. Corruption is rampant. It has not serious entrepreneurial business culture that can drive the country's economic development. It has untold billions in government investments into states and municipalities that have no investment return for the foreseeable future. But this bridge to nowhere economy, as some naysayers might call it, has one big immediate hurdle. That hurdle is Europe.

The US Federal Reserve may have underestimated the looming 2007 global financial crisis, released transcripts from its meetings that year have shown. The documents suggested Fed Governor Ben Bernanke wanted to hold off from addressing rising panic in the markets.

The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid plummeted to a five-year low last week, a hopeful sign the job market may be improving.

U.S. builders started work on homes in December at the fastest pace since the summer of 2008 and finished 2012 as their best year for residential construction since the early stages of the housing crisis.

The US Federal Reserve's latest report on the economy says activity has picked up slightly in the past two months.

A failure by Congress to raise the debt limit "in a timely manner" could lead to a downgrade of the nation's AAA credit rating, Fitch Ratings said Tuesday.

The U.S. trade deficit expanded in November to its widest point in seven months, driven by a surge in imports that outpaced modest growth in exports.