Labor/Economy

The U.S. Department of Commerce said that new single-family residential starts were at an annualized rate of 434,000 units in October. That’s a 5.1 percent increase month-over-month.

Italian prime minster Silvio Berlusconi resigned his post on Saturday and shuffled off into political retirement, though he remains a billionaire media mogul. On the other side of the world, the Japanese government reported a burst of activity in the country’s economy.

Greece can’t seem to form a new government to deal with its problems, but the world isn’t much interested any more, now that panic has set in about Italy.

The Conference Board released a big-picture report on the world economy on Tuesday, essentially predicting that it’s going to be a long, slow slog ahead.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and opposition leader Antonis Samaras have apparently cobbled together a deal for a “unity government” that might let the bailout of Greece by the more affluent euro-zone nations go forward.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported on Friday that the U.S. economy added 80,000 jobs in October, with modest growth in various private employment sectors pushing the total up, but continued cuts among state and local governments dragging the total down.

Though not in the major leagues of failure as Lehman Brothers or AIG were, it was still something of a shock on Monday when MF Global Holdings Ltd. went belly up.