Economy

Retail Sales Rebound as Consumers Step Up

AP / Mark Lennihan

(WASHINGTON) — Americans rebounded from a weak holiday season and stepped up spending on retail goods in January, an encouraging sign for the strengthening economy. Retail sales rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.4 percent last month, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Consumers spent more on electronics, home and garden supplies, sporting goods, at department and [...]

Are We Already Planting the Seeds of the Next Financial Crisis?

Central banks are trying to revive weak economies by injecting large amounts of money. That policy helps in the short run, but easy money can also create the conditions for future booms and busts.

Why the Greek Bailout Doesn’t Change Much of Anything

Aris Messinis / AFP / Getty Images

Thursday’s deal is supposed to allow Greece to avoid default and prevent the Eurozone from breaking up – but the deal isn’t final, it can’t work, and the real problems lie elsewhere.

Graphic: Executive Pay

REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

Facebook’s initial public offering filings revealed the salary of its top execs as a percentage of company income, which is four times that of Apple’s executive staff. How does it compare to other top American companies?

Why the Future Depends on Today’s Discouraged Workers

Jaime Monfort / Getty Images

The economy, the stock market and even the November elections will largely be determined by a group of people who are almost invisible to forecasters.

Bernanke Sticks with Low-Rate Policy at Hearing

WASHINGTON — Ben Bernanke on Tuesday reiterated the Federal Reserve’s plan to hold interest rates near record lows until at least late 2014. The Fed chairman stuck with the three-year time line at a Senate Budget Committee hearing, even after the government last week reported a surge in January hiring that drove the unemployment rate down to a [...]

Bernanke Urges Caution in Sharp Deficit Cutting

WASHINGTON — Ben Bernanke is urging lawmakers to balance their desire to cut deficits with policies that could help boost the weak economy in the short run. Bernanke told the House Budget Committee that he recognizes that huge budget deficits represent a serious threat to the economy.

Euro Banks Swap Cash for Trash

Jan Stromme / Getty Images

Cheap loans being offered by the European Central Bank to help reflate the Eurozone are encouraging some banks to boost their profits by loading up on risky bonds.

My Top Five Takeaways from Davos

Scott Eells / Bloomberg via Getty Images

One of the challenges of covering the World Economic Forum at Davos as a journalist is making sense of the whole thing. The forum is days and days of wandering conversations and endless debates on just about every subject you can imagine. So as I tried to summarize what I learned from Davos, I came [...]

Why the Eurozone Can’t Just Muddle Through

Sabine Scheckel / Getty Images

There’s a growing optimism that the common European currency can be saved, but the numbers argue that this is unrealistic.