Research Center

Housing starts experienced an unexpected uptick in March; unemployment dropped in two-thirds of U.S. states; and a jury finds Lee Farkas guilty of multiple counts of bank fraud.

Standard & Poor’s downgrades its rating of U.S. debt; homebuilder confidence slips even more; and a growing party in the Finnish government wants to cut off E.U. bailouts.

The House of Representatives voted for a symbolic federal budget on Friday afternoon, one which purports to cut the deficit by $6 trillion or so over the next decade and upend Medicare and Medicaid, previously considered (with Social Security) the third rail of federal spending.

The U.S. Consumer Price Index jumped 0.5 percent from February to March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and was up 2.7 percent compared with March 2010

Is President Obama’s plan to cut the deficit through spending cuts and tax increases, outlined in a speech on Wednesday, a path to U.S. fiscal solvency or not?

Is the Fed planning to tighten monetary policy? Some of its member banks have been asking for a modest increase.

It seems that there’s some elasticity in the demand for gasoline among U.S. consumers.

As the world well knows, the federal government didn’t shut down over the weekend. A deal was done practically at zero hour, meaning that federal workers will be at work on Monday morning, $39 billion (or about 1/1000) of the federal budget will disappear, and tourists will have something to do in D.C. this week.