Business and Finance news

Some of the latest developments in the Occupy protests:
GEORGIA
Police arrested 20 people after an Occupy Atlanta protest rally in a city park spilled onto the streets and officers converged on them on motorcycles, riding horseback and in riot gear.
A crowd of several hundred protesters had gathered at Woodruff Park, the scene of about 50 arrests […]

Stocks edged between small gains and losses Friday afternoon as traders scrutinized a plan to contain Europe’s debt crisis that sent the market soaring a day earlier.
The Dow Jones industrial average ended up nearly 23 points at 12,231. The Dow surged 339 points the day before, its biggest gain since Aug. 11. The Dow is […]

Investors in Asia dumped stocks Friday as weak economic indicators from major nations intensified fears of a new global recession, although a joint call to action by the Group of 20 nations helped calm markets in Europe.
Oil prices stabilized near $81 a barrel after diving to a near seven-week low on Thursday. The dollar was […]

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 […]

Japan’s parliament elected former Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda as the new prime minister on Tuesday _ the country’s sixth leader in five years.
A fiscal conservative, Noda faces a host of daunting problems, including the post-tsunami recovery and nuclear crisis, and a sluggish economy and the yen’s surge, which hurts Japan’s exporters.
Noda, who was elected Monday […]

Travelers across the nation waited for flights to resume in and out of East Coast airports that were closed by Tropical Storm Irene this weekend.
Irene was downgraded from a hurricane Sunday as winds ebbed around the time that the storm pushed into New York, the nation’s busiest air-traffic region.
Federal officials said airports reopened around Washington, […]

With markets still going haywire and conflicting financial advice coming from all directions, it would be tempting to just stick your head in the sand and hope it all goes away.
Instead, say experts, there are a few basic steps to take that will help you keep your finances intact, not to mention your sanity. (And […]

Asian stocks gave up early gains and fell Monday as fears that the U.S. is slipping back into recession caused investors to dump riskier assets.
Brent crude fell to near $106 a barrel in Asia as Libyan rebels entered Tripoli, boosting hopes the OPEC nation’s oil exports could resume soon. The dollar was stronger against the […]

Ameren Missouri has what, at first, might seem like an unusual strategy for reducing sulfur dioxide pollution from its power plants: an agreement to buy millions more tons of coal.
Missouri’s largest electric utility on Thursday announced a contract with its downtown neighbor, Peabody Energy Corp., for 91 million tons of coal from Wyoming’s Powder River […]

President Barack Obama will summon top Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House this week for another round of talks on cutting government spending and raising the nation’s borrowing limit, a GOP congressional aide said.
Obama is expected to call for the talks during remarks from the White House late Tuesday afternoon, said the aide, […]