Business and Finance news

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it will shuffle $400 billion of its portfolio to try to drive down long-term interest rates and get the economy going. But economists doubted it would do much good, the stock market sold off, and the Fed itself was unusually divided over the strategy.
Lowering interest rates makes it cheaper for […]

If you’re on Twitter, expect to see more ads flowing through your stream of tweets in the next few months.
The ads will show up even if the promotion is from a company that a person hasn’t chosen to follow. Until now, Twitter had only displayed ads that users were tracking.
As has been the case since […]

Congress gave President Barack Obama’s drive to promote jobs growth a boost Thursday by presenting him with a major overhaul of the patent system that the president has sought as a means to spur innovation and put more people back to work.
The Senate voted 89-9 to pass the patent bill and send it to Obama […]

Global stocks fell again Friday as fears of a possible U.S. recession combined with ongoing worries over Europe’s debt crisis, which is stoking acute fears over the continent’s banking sector.
However, a better than anticipated opening on Wall Street helped European markets recoup a large chunk of their earlier losses.
“This week has seen a continuation of […]

Treasury prices fell Thursday after the government reported that fewer people applied for unemployment benefits last week.
The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time claims for unemployment benefits dipped below 400,000 last week for the first time in four months. That gave investors more confidence to buy riskier assets like stocks. The Dow Jones industrial average […]

LONDON

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 […]

BJ’s Wholesale Club is being acquired by two private equity investors for roughly $2.8 billion.
The nation’s third-largest wholesale club said Wednesday that Leonard Green & Partners and CVC Capital Partners will pay $51.25 per share in cash for BJ’s common stock. That’s a 6.6 percent premium over Tuesday’s closing price of $48.08.
BJ’s has 190 stores […]

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