Business and Finance news

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is reiterating that Congress should not cut spending sharply while the economy is weak.
Bernanke tells the Joint Economic Committee that lawmakers face a delicate challenge: They must avoid making deep spending cuts that could impede the recovery. But he says they must also eventually cut spending more deeply than the […]

General Electric and other industrial companies are pushing stocks higher Tuesday in another day of choppy trading.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 25 points, or 0.2 percent, to 11,086 at 2:55 p.m. The Dow dropped as many as 73 points in the morning. General Electric Co. rose the most of the 30 Dow stocks, […]

Federal officials say offshore oil and gas workers in the Gulf of Mexico are going back to platforms and rigs that had been evacuated because of Tropical Storm Lee.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement said Monday in a news release that 232 production platforms and 24 rigs had been evacuated. That meant […]

Discouraging economic data from around the globe have heightened fears that another recession is on the way.
Fresh evidence emerged Thursday that U.S. home sales and manufacturing are weakening. Signs also surfaced that European banks are increasingly burdened by the region’s debt crisis and sputtering economy.
The rising anxiety ignited a huge sell-off in stocks that led […]

Eight of 90 banks flunked stress tests projecting how they would fare in another recession, and 16 more barely passed _ but the results proved controversial.
Some countries challenged the results as inaccurate and overly pessimistic, while analysts worried the tests did not account for the key risk of a Greek debt default.
As it presented the […]

The Inlet House condo complex in Fort Pierce, Fla., was once the kind of place the 55-and-older set aspired to. It was affordable. The pool and clubhouse were tidy, the lawns freshly snipped. Residents, push-carts in tow, walked to the beach, the bank, the beauty parlor, the cinema and the supermarket. In post-crash America, this […]

Canada’s hot housing market appears to be at its near-term peak, with current high prices concealing early signs of moderating market, according to a new survey released Thursday by Royal LePage.
In its House Price Survey and Market Survey Forecast, Royal LePage says Canada’s residential real estate market saw sizable year-over-year price increases in the second […]

SUNSET HILLS

MACAU

American companies are on a hiring spree.
Businesses delivered a jolt of strength to the economy by generating 268,000 jobs in April, the biggest monthly total in more than five years. The gains were solid across an array of industries, even beleaguered construction.
It was the third month in a row of at least 200,000 new jobs. […]