Finance Globe

The job market began to show signs of recovery in December 2010 as the unemployment rate fell to its lowest point in nineteen months. The national unemployment rate fell significantly in December to 9.4%, down from 9.8% in November, the Labor Department’s Bureau of of Labor Statistics (BLS) stated in its latest employment report. Last month’s unemployment rate was a half percent below its reported level in December 2009 when it was 9.9% - just two...

Sales of existing homes jumped in December for the fifth month of sales increases within the past six months, a positive sign that the housing market continues to improve. Sales of existing homes, including single-family, townhomes, condos, and co-ops, increased by a healthy 12.3% in December according to a report released today by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). At December’s seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.28 million home sales, it was 2.9% lower than the...

Existing home sales in August rose 7.6% after a big correction in July, but are still 19% lower than the sales pace from a year ago, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported on Thursday. Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said existing home sales still remain subpar. “The housing market is trying to recover on its own power without the home buyer tax credit. Despite very attractive affordability conditions, a housing market recovery will likely be...

The U.S. Treasury Department announced on Wednesday efforts to increase transparency and accountability for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and "a new policy of posting investment contracts for future completed transactions to the Department's website within five to 10 business days." Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said, "In the coming weeks, we will unveil a series of reforms to help stabilize the nation's financial system and get credit flowing again to families and businesses. Included in...

The IRS announced that it continues to make “strong progress” in their efforts to fight international tax evasion and has recieved up to 30,000 voluntary disclosures since 2009. “By any measure, we are in the middle of an unprecedented period for our global international tax enforcement efforts,” said IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. “We have pierced international bank secrecy laws, and we are making a serious dent in offshore tax evasion.” The IRS said that global tax...

The median household income fell in 2010, resulting in an increase in the percentage of people living in poverty for the third year in a row, the government reported on Tuesday. The U.S. Census Bureau said that last year’s median household income of $49,445 was 2.3 percent lower than it was in 2009, and 6.4 percent lower than it was in 2007 - the year before the last recession started. In 2010, the official U.S. poverty...

The economy added more jobs than expected in September, the government reported on Friday. While not quite enough to reduce the unemployment rate, it may be enough to thwart another recession. Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis said, "Our nation's labor market posted growth in the month of September.” Non-farm payroll employment added 137,000 private sector jobs. Health care added 44,000 jobs in September, for a total of 336,000 over the past year. Employment in professional and...

U.S. Government considering a broad rescue. There's talk of a historic move by the federal government to control the ensuing credit crisis by rescuing financial institutions from their bad investment decisions. Though details of the plan have not been finalized, the government is considering forming a government entity to absorb the bad loans that are responsible for the failures of huge companies and the uncertainty of the economy. This move is reported to be similar to...

Equifax, one of the world’s largest suppliers of credit information and related services, recently announced a data breach that may have affected as many as 143 million consumers in the United States. The company went on to explain that “criminals exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files.” At this point, Equifax believes that the access occurred from the middle of May 2017 through July 2017. The information accessed by the criminals...

The federal government on Tuesday ordered Citibank and its subsidiaries to pay back consumers approximately $700 million harmed by the bank's illegal practices conducted from 2003 through 2012. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said that roughly 7 million of the bank's customers were affected by Citibank and its vendor's deceptive marketing, unfair billing practices, and administration of debt protection and credit monitoring services. Citibank's debt protection services "AccountCare," "Balance Protector," "Credit Protection," "Credit Protector," and "Payment...