[05/22/13]  Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said raising interest rates or reducing asset purchases too soon would endanger the recovery as the economy remains hampered by high unemployment and government spending cuts. “A premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily but would also carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery and causing inflation to fall further,” Bernanke said today in testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress in Washington. Bernanke lamented the human and economic costs of an unemployment rate at 7.5 percent nearly four years into the recovery from the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and he said the Fed’s record easing is...

[05/13/13]  Retail sales unexpectedly rose in April, pointing to underlying strength in the economy and leading forecasters to bump up second-quarter growth estimates. The surprise gain in retail sales, which account for about 30 percent of consumer spending, was the latest sign of resilience in an economy that has been hit by belt-tightening in Washington as the government tries to cut its budget deficit. "It's more indication that our economy is growing. It's not growing as rapidly as a lot of people would like, but things are improving," said Tom Hall, an economics professor at Miami University's Farmer School of Business in Oxford, Ohio. Retail sales edged up 0.1...

[05/03/13]  The U.S. dollar surged against the yen and global equity markets rallied on Friday after the U.S. government reported jobs growth for April that topped expectations, driving stocks on Wall Street to record highs. U.S. nonfarm payrolls rose by 165,000 last month and the jobless rate fell to a four-year low of 7.5 percent, the Labor Department said. Hiring was also much stronger than previously thought in the prior two months, signs of a resilient jobs market. Economists expected payrolls to rise by 145,000 and the unemployment rate to hold steady at 7.6 percent. Leading U.S. and European indexes advanced more than 1 percent in a rally that...

[04/29/13]  The U.S. government expects to pay down debt in the current quarter for the first time in six years, the Treasury Department said on Monday, citing stronger-than-expected revenues. It said it would pay down $35 billion in net marketable debt in the April-June quarter, and would likely end the quarter with a cash balance of $75 billion. In February, it estimated that it would need to borrow $103 billion, even as it projected a smaller end-of-quarter cash balance. It is the first retirement of government debt since a $145 billion paydown in the April-June 2007 quarter. The Treasury also said it expects to issue $223 billion in net...

[04/24/13]  Demand for durable goods slumped in March by the most in seven months, adding to signs manufacturing in the U.S. cooled at the end of the first quarter. Bookings for merchandise meant to last at least three years fell 5.7 percent after a revised 4.3 percent gain the prior month that was smaller than previously estimated, the Commerce Department reported today in Washington. The less-volatile category that excludes transportation equipment unexpectedly dropped for a second month. Companies such as Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) are feeling the pinch as customers rein in spending on equipment and inventories on concern that across-the-board federal budget cuts and slower growth overseas will restrain the world’s largest economy. At the...