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New single-family home sales fell slightly in October and the prior month's pace of sales was revised sharply lower, casting a small shadow over what has been one of the brighter spots in the U.S. economy.

Cyber Monday online sales beat forecasts by nearly half a billion dollars. ComScore on Monday predicted that Cyber Monday would generate $1.5 billion in online sales, but according to Adobe, the shopping day ended up raking in $1.98 billion, which was a 17% increase compared to last year.

Britain named Canadian central bank chief Mark Carney on Monday as the next governor of the Bank of England, springing the surprise choice of a foreigner to help steer the world's sixth-largest economy out of stagnation.

The Indian economy is likely to have grown at 5.5 % in the July-September quarter, posing a "difficult situation," the country's federal finance minister, P. Chidambaram, said Saturday. "When growth declines to 5.5% as it has in the first quarter [April-June] of this financial year and when the growth is likely to be around 5.5% in the second quarter of this financial year, it goes without saying we are facing a difficult situation," Mr. Chidambaram told a bankers' conference in the Western Indian city of Pune.

President Obama's coalition came through for him big time on Election Day, and members of the coalition want him to return the favor.

Leaders resumed talks on a trillion-euro budget for the European Union on Friday, but played down expectations of a resolution before the weekend as divisions lingered on where cuts should be applied.

A housing comeback is now underway; that much is clear. Adding to a steady drumbeat of positive data for the sector, new data on Tuesday showed a surprising 3.6 percent gain in housing starts in October, which came on the back of a 15.1 percent rise in September.

The euro zone economy is on course for its weakest quarter since the dark days of early 2009, according to business surveys that showed companies toiling against shrinking order books in November.

China's vast manufacturing sector saw expansion accelerate in November for the first time in 13 months, preliminary results from a factory survey showed, a sign that the pace of economic growth has revived after seven consecutive quarters of slowdown.

There is a dirty little secret about economics writing. The thing that offers the surest path to glory to front page play for a story, to lots of Web traffic, to a pat on the back from editors is doom and gloom. When we can point out something that is awful, whether it is a collapsing job market or rising poverty or skyrocketing gasoline prices, the world seems a whole lot more interested in what we have to say. It's not for nothing they call economics the dismal science.