Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the U.S. recovery, while being sustained by private demand, isn’t as strong as he prefers and faces risks from Europe’s debt crisis that may require further Fed action. U.S. growth is “not as fast as we would like,” Bernanke told the House Budget Committee in testimony today just hours [...]

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President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.” The CHART OF THE DAY tracks U.S. gross domestic product and the government’s total debt, which rose past $13 trillion for the first [...]

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If you think the jobs situation has become pretty hopeless, you’re not alone. Roughly 1.1 million workers have given up hope of finding employment. The staggering level of “discouraged workers” as the government calls them has swelled to historic proportions in 2010, past the million barrier for the first time since the Bureau of Labor [...]

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Greek demonstrations against government austerity measures turned deadly when three people were killed after protesters set fire to a bank in central Athens. Fire officials at the scene said they discovered three bodies in the building, according to a fire-department statement sent by text message today. The building, located near the Greek parliament, housed a branch [...]

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LONDON: Britain, which emerged from recession in the final quarter of 2009, faces a “high” risk of relapse and below-average growth in the next two years, the British Chamber of Commerce warned on Sunday. “The UK economic outlook will remain highly uncertain for a considerable time,” the BCC said in the group’s latest economic forecast. [...]

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BRUSSELS: Unemployment in the 16-nation eurozone remained at 9.9 percent in January, providing more evidence that Europe’s recovery from the worst recession in decades is a largely jobless one. The crumb of comfort, for European statisticians if not for the unemployed, was that December’s first estimate of a double-digit unemployment rate was revised back to [...]

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NEW YORK – Wall Street stocks rallied Thursday as sentiment was lifted by an EU pledge to help Greece stave off a debt crisis and better-than-expected US labour market data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average overcame a weak start and climbed 105.81 points (1.05 percent) to close at 10,144.19, rebounding from modest losses Wednesday. The [...]

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Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) — Australianemployers added the most workers in more than three years in January, sending the currency surging on speculation the central bank will resume its record round of interest-rate increases. The number of people employed rose 52,700 from December, the fifth straight monthly gain, the statistics bureau said in Sydney today. The [...]

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The January jobs report could turn the tide for markets Friday, but traders say there’s a lingering global risk aversion that won’t easily fade away. The government’s employment report was supposed to have been the story of the week. That was until markets around the globe started focusing on the idea that sovereign debt risk [...]

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LONDON: The Bank of England on Thursday is expected to call an end to its radical policy of pumping out new money after Britain narrowly emerged from recession in the fourth quarter of 2009, analysts said. Most economists also predict that the central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) will leave its key interest rate unchanged [...]

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