Recession, Economic Recovery | featured news

Technically, the economy has been in recovery for two years. But it turns out the rich have been doing most of the recovering. In 2010 -- the first full year since the end of the Great Recession -- virtually all of the income growth in America took place among the country's very wealthiest people, says an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. The top 1 percent of earners took in a full 93 percent of all the income gains that year, leaving the other 7 percent of gains to be sprinkled among the vast majority of society.

In a healthy recovery, states and localities produce jobs, expand social services and help fuel the nation's economic growth. Then there's the 2011 recovery. The U.S. economy is moving ahead, however fitfully. Yet state and local governments are still stuck in recession. Short of cash, they cut 30,000 jobs in May, the seventh straight month they've shed workers. Rather than add to U.S. economic growth, they're subtracting from it.

The U.S. economy is not fully recovered from its deep recession with housing still weighing on growth, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Friday in a speech on the importance of community development.

Thailand's economy emerges from recession after a pick up in exports, government figures show.

Layaway, once the province of the poor, has gone mainstream. At the Mall of America in Minnesota, shoppers dart in for just one or two things. In New York, socialites do the unthinkable: They wear the same ball gown twice.

On the day that the Great Recession was officially declared to be part of history, President Obama confronted deepening angst from business leaders and ordinary Americans who have little faith that the recovery is for real.

Second-quarter economic growth was revised to an anemic 1.6%, a decline that was slightly less than many economists had predicted. But the report was a sobering cap to a week of bad economic news that has raised fears the nation could plunge into another recession.

The Federal Reserve expects unemployment will stay high over the next two years because recession-scarred Americans are likely to stay cautious, making for only a moderate-paced economic recovery.

Most banks have stopped toughening their lending standards for consumers and businesses, and manufacturing activity is at the highest levels in five years—both further signs of a strengthening U.S. economy.

Personal incomes rose more than expected in December and consumer spending increased for the third straight month, helping the economy slowly recover from the worst recession in decades.