Massachusetts home sales posted the second consecutive month of year-over-year increases in August as more buyers came off the sidelines and prices continued to rise, the clearest signs yet the housing market is beginning a recovery, analysts said. Three groups released data measuring various aspects of the housing market yesterday, but [ Read More → ]

Hopes of an early exit from the recession today boosted the US after the Commerce Department revealed that the world’s no.1 economy shrank at a far slower rate in the second quarter than previous estimates showed. According to the Commerce Department, the US economy contracted by 0.7% between the April and [ Read More → ]

BOSTON (AP) - One steady bit of good economic news: Inflation remains near zero. So who would want to pay extra these days to add a dose of inflation protection in their portfolio? Plenty of people. It turns out sales are hot for Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, a common hedge against rising [ Read More → ]

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has today revealed that the UK economy contracted by 0.6% in the April to June period - rather than the 0.7% previously reported and the 0.8% reported prior to that. The latest revision comes as the manufacturing and construction sectors performed better than originally [ Read More → ]

The percentage of households receiving food stamps in Philadelphia increased by nearly 3 percentage points between 2007 and 2008 - the period of time marking the start of the recession - according to figures released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau. And that number is only expected to rise, according to [ Read More → ]

The New Zealand economy is better placed than many but is still at the mercy of an uncertain global economic recovery, according to credit reporting agency Dun & Bradstreet (D&B). Its quarterly Global Economic & Risk Outlook Report, released today, said a sustained improvement in the global economic outlook was not [ Read More → ]

European and US equities markets were helped to gains Monday by mergers news that included purchases by US companies Xerox Corp (NYSE: XRX), Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ). The new acquisitions were seen as a sign that the global economy is recovering. The FTSE 100 was 1.64 [ Read More → ]

Investors are just not sure where the economy is headed, so the stock market may be in limbo for a while. After stocks stumbled last week on disappointing reports on housing and manufacturing, investors are concerned that the economy’s rebound will be slower than originally thought. They may cool their buying [ Read More → ]

Minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting have revealed that policymakers are optimistic that the US downturn is coming to an end. However, the minutes did say that the economy is “likely to recover only slowly during the second half of this year and all saw it as still vulnerable to [ Read More → ]

TRENTON, N.J. - A new study finds that the recession has left many jobless workers struggling to cope with the psychological stress caused by becoming unemployed in a weak economy. Researchers at the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University said the financial strain that comes with being [ Read More → ]