Articles About Economics

80,000 was the number. 200,000 is what we need for this to feel like a recovery. And 8.2 is the number that keeps hanging on.  The nation’s unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2% (that’s 13 million unemployed workers) for the second consecutive month, the Labor Department said Friday.  Businesses added just 84,000 jobs, while governments […]

For a man who once said, “I’d rather be dead than singing Satisfaction when I’m forty-five”, the  50th birthday of the Rolling Stones must come as a surprise. That’s right the British Invasion’s most enduring act celebrates its golden anniversary July 12, 2012.  Founded in London in 1962 by Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, […]

Wobbly economies that shook up markets in 2011 took their toll on the world’s rich, though fast-growing Asia for the first time had more millionaires than North America.  According to the report, the global personal wealth of people worth $1 million declined in 2011 for the second time in four years, a side effect of […]

International lenders and Greece will renegotiate the program on which the second financial bailout for Athens is based because the original has become outdated, according to a senior Eurozone official.  Greece received a €130-billion bailout in February from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  General elections in May and June delayed the […]

The percentage of borrowers who are behind on making mortgage payments fell to a four-year low in the first three months of 2012, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).  The percentage of loans that were delinquent or in the foreclosure process during the 1st quarter was 11.33 percent, the lowest level since 2008.  That […]

Home prices — including distressed sales (foreclosures and short sales), climbed 1.1 percent in April, according to a new report from CoreLogic.  If you don’t count distressed sales, prices rose 2.6 percent.  Prices have not risen for two consecutive months since June 2010, a time when the homebuyer tax credit was still available. Although the […]

In a sign that no Eurozone nation is completely immune to the shocks of the European debt crisis, ratings agency Moody’s Investor Services has cut the credit ratings of six banks in Germany.  The largest bank to be downgraded is Commerzbank, Germany’s second-biggest lender, which was cut to A3 from A2. “Today’s rating actions are […]

Spain asked the Eurozone for a bailout of up to €100-billion to rescue its banks.  This is just a short-term fix for the troubled Eurozone because it doesn’t address the underlying problems in the monetary union.  The earlier bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal didn’t resolve the problems either.  “The Spanish banking bailout is big […]

While the American public was bailing out Wall Street, those same taxpayers saw their families’ net worth decline by nearly 40 percent. The recession took roughly 20 years of Americans’ wealth, according to government data, with middle-class families faring the worst.  According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of families plummeted by 39 […]

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), has asked policymakers to focus their crisis support on solvent Eurozone banks.  “The ECB will continue lending to solvent banks and will keep the liquidity lines active and alive with solvent banks,” Draghi said. World stock markets have lost roughly $4 trillion as European turmoil proliferated […]