Financial related news.
NEW YORK — Big technology companies provided the energy for most of the broader market's sharp ascent in 2023 and their latest financial reports so far justify that confidence from investors. Microsoft and Google's parent company Alphabet reported strong profit growth that beat analysts' forecasts. Chipmaker Intel surprised Wall Street with a profit during its [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fitch Ratings has downgraded the federal government's credit rating, citing rising debt at the federal, state and local levels, and a "steady deterioration in standards of governance" over the past two decades. The rating was cut earlier this week one notch to AA+ from AAA, the highest possible rating. The new rating [...]
WASHINGTON — For more than a year, the U.S. economy has defied predictions of a forthcoming recession. It has withstood 10 interest rate hikes in 16 months from an inflation-fighting Federal Reserve. In June, America's employers added 209,000 jobs. Will the economy remain resilient? Can the Fed achieve a notoriously difficult "soft landing" — slowing [...]
FULTON, Mo. (AP) — At the entrance to Missouri prisons, large signs plead for help: "NOW HIRING" ... "GREAT PAY & BENEFITS." No experience is necessary. Anyone 18 and older can apply. Long hours are guaranteed. Though the assertion of "great pay" for prison guards would have seemed dubious in the past, a series of [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Signs that inflation pressures are steadily easing emerged last week in reports that consumer prices rose in June at their slowest pace in more than two years and that wage growth cooled last quarter. Together, the figures provided the latest signs that the Federal Reserve's drive to tame inflation may succeed without [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite more than a year of widespread warnings that a recession was near, America's economy is, if anything, accelerating. Even as the Federal Reserve has sent borrowing costs sharply higher, the economy's resilience has been on plain display: Consumers keep spending, and employers keep hiring. Inflation has reached its lowest level in [...]
NEW YORK (AP) — The Federal Reserve's expected move this week to raise interest rates for the 11th time could once again send ripple effects across the economy. Mortgage rates, which have surged since the Fed began lifting rates in March 2022, could rise further. So could rates on credit cards and some business loans. [...]
Pamela White stared at the silver tree with twinkling lights while she cleaned out her son's apartment, wondering how in a matter of days she went from celebrating Christmas to having to think about headstones and burial plots. Her son, Dararius Evans, was an Army reservist and veteran who had survived a deployment in Iraq. [...]
WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service said it is ending its decades-old policy of making unannounced home and business visits, in an effort to help keep its workers safe and to combat scammers who pose as IRS agents. Effective immediately, revenue agents will no longer make unplanned visits to taxpayers' homes and businesses "except in [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Chair Jerome Powell and other Federal Reserve officials gather this week for their latest decision on interest rates, they will do so on the cusp of achieving an elusive "soft landing" — the feat of curbing inflation without causing a deep recession. After the Fed began aggressively raising borrowing costs early [...]