Quarterly Earnings | featured news

Two of the nation's largest banks released third-quarter results that suggest the U.S. housing market, a key factor in the nation's economic performance, is bouncing back as mortgage rates hit record lows and home refinancings surge.

Finally moving beyond a trading debacle that has stained his once-stellar reputation, Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, on Friday trumpeted a strong quarter of earnings stemming from a surge in mortgage lending.

As the government expands its support of the housing market, analysts expect that mortgage profits at banks will rise in third-quarter earnings reports and will continue well into next year.

Walgreen's fiscal-fourth-quarter earnings fell 55% as less customer traffic at the drugstore chain contributed to a steeper-than-expected sales decline.

Research In Motion shares rise in after-hours trading as the maker of the Blackberry posts a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss.

U.S. manufacturing closed out its weakest quarter in three years this month and the number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits held near two-month highs last week, suggesting the economic recovery is failing to gain traction.

The Swiss economy has long appeared to be surprisingly resilient to the economic downturn across Europe, but the latest statistics released Tuesday showed that Switzerland is slowing down together with the rest of Europe. After a strong first quarter, the economy contracted in the second because of falling exports to the euro zone, the Alpine country's biggest trade partner. Compared with a year earlier, the Swiss economy still managed to expand at a 0.5% pace, but it contracted 0.1% from the first quarter.

A decrease in the amount owed on mortgages helped drive overall U.S. consumer debt lower in the second quarter, even as Americans kept piling up student loan debt, data showed on Wednesday. Total consumer debt fell 0.5 percent to $11.38 trillion compared to the first three months of the year, the New York Fed said in its quarterly household debt and credit report.

Here’s something that may (or may not) surprise about you about banks: They’re raking in profits like it’s 2007. It's not such a rosy environment for banks once you cut a little deeper into the numbers. The latest data from the FDIC show banks taking in net income of $34.5 billion in the second quarter of 2012, that’s up $5.9 billion from from the second quarter of 2011.

Best Buy's worse-than-expected second-quarter earnings may provide ballast for the company's founder and his hope to buy it back. But the results also raise the question of whether the struggling retailer has time to turn itself around, in public or in private.