Recession | featured news

The 2008 financial crisis roiled the banking system and swamped the global economy, leaving millions of Americans jobless, underemployed or facing foreclosure. In its wake, Congress set out to overhaul how the government oversees Wall Street. The result was a sprawling law, the Dodd-Frank Act, which aims to prevent future crises by giving the government new tools and restricting banks' activities. The law may make future crises less likely, but it increases costs for companies, especially banks, and their customers.

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.

The Spanish economy is falling deeper into recession and depositors are pulling their money out of the banks, figures published on Tuesday showed, while the country's most economically important region, Catalonia, said it needed a major rescue from Madrid.

The U.K. economy isn't as deeply in recession as thought, revised official figures showed, though analysts cautioned its economy in still in dire straits.

The Olympics brought less tourist money to recession-hit Britain than officials expected, a trade group said Monday, with a majority of tourist businesses reporting losses from last year.

Growth at or below 2% isn't enough to lower the unemployment rate. The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of just 1.5 percent from April through June, as Americans cut back sharply on spending. The slowdown in growth adds to worries that the economy could be stalling three years after the recession ended.

The global economy is in the worst shape since the dark days of 2009. Six of the 17 countries that use the euro currency are in recession. The U.S. economy is struggling again. And the economic superstars of the developing world - China, India and Brazil - are in no position to come to the rescue. They're slowing, too.

As slow as the recovery in jobs has been, a few states are doing quite well. Seven have more jobs now than before the recession. Some - Texas, North Dakota and Alaska - are benefiting from an oil boom... The other states that have regained all their lost jobs are: New York, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and South Dakota. New York has seen broad-based gains in education and health care, financial services,and other professional services such as legal services and accounting.

Since the recession ended in June 2009, men have gained 80% of the 2.6 million net jobs created in the U.S., including 61% in the last year. Even as women have moved up the economic ladder and outpaced men in earnings growth over the last decade, they are lagging behind in a crucial area — getting new jobs.

Third straight month of weak hiring shows economy is struggling three years after recession ended. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent, the Labor Department said Friday. Click to Continue »