Archives for January 2009
Total compensation costs for civilian workers increased 0.5 percent, seasonally adjusted, from September to December 2008. For the year ended December 2008, compensation costs rose 2.6 percent. The 12-month increase for wages and salaries was 2.7 percent and the benefits increase was 2.2 percent.
The economy shrank at its fastest pace in nearly 27 years in the fourth quarter, government data showed, sinking deeper into recession as consumers and business cut spending.
The Commerce Department today reported that gross domestic product, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, plummeted at a 3.8 percent annual rate, the lowest [...]
Western Alliance Bancorp (NYSE: WAL) reported a loss for the year ended December 31, 2008 of ($236.5) million, or ($7.28) per share compared with net income a year earlier of $32.9 million, or $1.06 per share. For the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2008, the company reported a net loss of ($148.3) million, or ($3.94) [...]
Sales of newly built single-family homes fell 14.7 percent in December, the largest monthly decline since 1994, data showed on Thursday, indicating the housing market’s downward spiral was far from reaching a bottom.
The Commerce Department said sales tumbled to a 331,000 annual pace, the lowest since it started keeping records in 1963. November’s sales were [...]
New orders for long-lasting manufactured goods dropped 2.6 percent in December, falling for a fifth straight month, according to a report on Thursday that underscored the deepening economic malaise.
Durable goods orders for November were revised to show a decline of 3.7 percent, the Commerce Department said, which was previously reported as a 1.5 percent fall. For [...]
The number of people receiving unemployment benefits has reached an all-time record, the government said today, as layoffs continued to spread throughout the economy.
The Labor Department reported that the number of Americans continuing to claim unemployment insurance for the week ending Jan. 17 was a seasonally adjusted 4.78 million, the highest on records dating back [...]
Washington, DC – The U.S. Treasury Department today announced investments of approximately $386 million in 23 banks across the nation as part of its Capital Purchase Program (CPP), a means to directly infuse capital into healthy, viable banks with the goal of increasing the flow of financing available to small businesses and consumers. With additional capital, banks [...]
Americans’ mood about the economy darkened further in January, sending a widely watched barometer of consumer sentiment to a new low, the Conference Board reported today.
The Board said its Consumer Confidence Index edged down to 37.7 from a revised 38.6 in December. In recent months the index has hit its lowest troughs since it began [...]
(But apparently not to Nevada, according to this Associated Press story)
LOS ANGELES – Mike Reilly spent his lifetime chasing the California dream. This year he’s going to look for it in Colorado.
With a house purchase near Denver in the works, the 38-year-old engineering contractor plans to move his family 1,200 miles away from his home [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal regulators are asking financial institutions to monitor their use of government money received under the $700 billion rescue plan and other support.
Banks and other financial institutions should track how the federal money or guarantees they received helped them boost “prudent lending” and efforts to help at-risk borrowers avoid foreclosures, the Federal [...]