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Suddenly the Federal Reserve is everybody's punching bag.
The Obama administration, mindful of public anxiety over the government's mushrooming debt, is shifting emphasis from big-spending policies to deficit reduction. Domestic agencies have been told to brace for a spending freeze or cuts of up to 5 percent as part of a midterm election-year push to rein in record budget shortfalls.
Heavy government stimulus spending and near-zero interest rates did little to end a "lost decade" of stagnation and mushrooming debt in Japan. Some economists and lawmakers say the U.S. may wind up following the same trajectory.
Tugged in different political directions, the White House is seeking credit for good economic news and trying to escape blame for the bad stuff.
It's about to become official: The recession is over — but not the pain.
Even with an economic revival, many U.S. jobs lost during the recession may be gone forever and a weak employment market could linger for years.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a multimillion dollar advertising campaign Wednesday to promote job growth and call attention to what it sees as the dangers of government meddling in the private marketplace.
A distressed economy is widely blamed for President George H.W. Bush's re-election defeat in 1992, and a decade earlier, for the loss of 26 House seats in midterm elections by Ronald Reagan's Republicans. Yet in both instances recession had already ended or was winding down.
U.S. financial regulators told Congress on Wednesday that national differences are vexing efforts to make good on pledges by world leaders to establish new international mechanisms to prevent another financial meltdown.
The world's major powers are repeatedly breaking their pledges not to erect trade barriers, and there's no sign the "protectionist juggernaut" will ease as countries recover from the global downturn, an influential monitoring organization said Friday.
Leaders of the world's 20 top economies vowed to resist protectionism last November and again in April as they charted a joint strategy for confronting the worst global downturn in generations. As they meet again, they'll get this progress report: Most of their economies are on the mend — and trade tensions and protectionism are on the rise.
After a year of costly government bailouts and public distaste for more, the government's response to the next company deemed "too big to fail" could be — another bailout.
For all the GOP howling about Barack Obama radically steering the government to the left and leading the nation toward socialism, some of his major appointments are Republican men and women of the middle.
Giving Ben Bernanke a second term as Federal Reserve chairman was the politically safe course for a president beset by multiple crises and wanting no new battles.
After declaring he would rather look forward, President Barack Obama is delving instead into the past to deal with lingering assertions of CIA mistreatment of terror suspects during the Bush administration. It's another headache for an administration struggling to juggle two wars, a painful recession and a crowded agenda bogged down in Congress.
Turnabouts in European and Asian economies, along with recent gains in the U.S., are raising hopes that that the worldwide recession is drawing to a close. That's not to say the coast is clear.
Turnabouts in European and Asian economies, along with recent gains in the U.S., are raising hopes that the worldwide recession is drawing to a close. That's not to say the coast is clear.
As Congress agonizes over health care, an even more daunting and dangerous challenge is bearing down: how to shore up Social Security to keep it from burying the nation ever deeper in debt.
Some of President Barack Obama's health care numbers don't seem to add up. And that's complicating his efforts to pass his top domestic priority.
It's a tale of two economies, China and the United States.
President Barack Obama, citing a new White House study suggesting that small businesses pay far more per employee for health insurance than big companies, said Saturday the disparity is "unsustainable — it's unacceptable."
At a critical moment in his presidency, Barack Obama finds increasing need to talk about taming federal deficits as he struggles with a dour economy.
The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today's bleak landscape.
Lacking the votes to block Sonia Sotomayor from the Supreme Court, Republicans established lines in the sand for challenging any future nominee for the high court and tried to limit President Barack Obama's hand if he gets another opportunity to pick a nominee.
The Founding Fathers left one legacy not celebrated on Independence Day but which affects us all. It's the national debt.
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