Business and Finance news

O’FALLON, Mo.

Portugal’s Social Democrats unseated the Socialist government in an emphatic election victory Sunday, giving the center-right party a strong mandate to enact a grinding austerity program demanded in return for a euro78 billion ($114 billion) international bailout.
Though the severe debt-reduction measures are expected to pitch the country into deep recession and bring sharply lower living […]

European officials say the Group of Eight rich nations will offer about $20 billion in pledges and commitments for Arab countries that have thrown out autocrats and are struggling to build new democracies.
President Barack Obama and other G-8 leaders are debating how and how much to aid Egypt and Tunisia after uprisings there.
The leaders of […]

Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) are among 14 U.K. lenders whose debt Moody’s Investors Service is considering downgrading because the withdrawal of government support may increase their credit risk.
Santander U.K. Plc and customer-owned lenders including Nationwide Building Society also had their debt ratings put on review […]

A security official says gunmen have opened fire on two soldiers in southern Yemen, killing one and wounding the other.
Another official in the same province said a security officer was snatched by unknown gunmen while in a taxi, and his location is unknown. Both officials were speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not […]

The European Central Bank can raise interest rates while at the same time keeping its non-standard tools in place, President Jean-Claude Trichet said.
“The ECB has indicated clearly that interest-rate increases could perfectly well take place independently of the timing of the phasing out of the non-standard measures — if those non-standard measures continue to […]

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said high debt levels pose “massive” economic challenges that would be exacerbated by higher interest rates.
“The economic consequences of high-level indebtedness now would become more severe if rates were to rise,” King said today at a committee of the European Parliament in Brussels. “It is the main reason […]

Employers recruited more than half their interns for full-time positions last year, the highest rate of intern-to-staff hiring in a decade, according to survey results released Thursday.
The survey showed that companies turn 58% of their interns into full-time employees.
"That’s the highest conversion rate we’ve seen since we started tracking this on an annual basis […]

Investors are paying the smallest discounts for Treasuries other than the newest, most-traded bonds since the start of the financial crisis, a sign of growing demand even as the Federal Reserve’s $600 billion buying program approaches its conclusion.
Yields on older notes with 10 years left to maturity have fallen to within 11.4 basis points, […]

Two weeks ago, I booked tickets for my family of four to fly to Munich this July and depart three weeks later from Paris. It’s a trip of a lifetime for us that has been in the planning stages for years. We get to freeload in Germany, saving lodging expenses for a week with my nephew, […]