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Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came to power pledging to improve the lives of common people. Soaring fuel and food prices are jeopardizing that goal, and his political future, as his term enters its final year.
Singh's Indian National Congress party lost elections this week in the southern state of Karnataka, its ninth failure […]

Prices of U.S. single-family homes plunged a record 14.4 percent in March from a year earlier, while consumer confidence slumped to its lowest in 16 years in May as gasoline prices surged.
The Standard & Poor’s/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas released on Tuesday showed prices of previously owned homes fell 2.2 […]

Retail gas prices hit record highs for the 14th day in a row, motorist group AAA’s Web site showed Wednesday.
The nationwide average for a gallon of regular unleaded rose to $3.807, up from $3.80 the previous day.
Gas prices have now risen for 15 straight days.
The AAA national average shows gas prices up about 9% […]

In 1998, when Boediono was Indonesia's planning minister, he refused to let President B.J. Habibie spend $300 million to develop a commercial aircraft industry. As Bank Indonesia governor starting today, he'll have to resist political pressure against raising interest rates.
The first task facing Boediono, who goes by one name, will be to fight […]

Thomson Reuters Corp. will cut 1,500 jobs as the newly combined financial and professional information provider moves to consolidate operations and reduce costs, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.
Thomson Reuters had been widely expected to eliminate overlaps between the companies and make cut jobs following Thomson Corp.’s acquisition of Reuters Group PLC […]

The world's most powerful central banks are telegraphing the end of interest-rate cuts, and traders already anticipate the first steps in the opposite direction.
Federal Reserve officials this week flagged inflation risks after slashing borrowing costs seven times since September and Bank of England Governor Mervyn King unveiled Britain's worst price outlook in a […]

Thailand's consumer confidence fell for the first time in six months in April as surging food and oil prices fanned the fastest inflation in two years.
The index declined to 73 last month from 73.8 in March, the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce said in Bangkok today. The gauge tracks a nationwide […]

While Canada’s economy continues to churn out jobs, some cities are getting left behind.
Amid waves of job cuts in the crucial automotive sector, Oshawa’s unemployment rate suddenly ranks among the highest of major Canadian cities, climbing to 7.6 per cent in April from 6.4 per cent the month before, according to Statistics Canada.
General […]

A standoff between Argentine farmers and the government over agricultural exports threatens to slow the growth of South America's second-largest economy as a national strike disrupts trade for the second time since March.
Farmers vowed to block grain shipments for eight days after talks over a new variable export tax collapsed May 7. Overnight […]

Further evidence that times are tough: It now costs more than a penny to make a penny. And the cost of a nickel is more than 7 1/2 cents.
Surging prices for copper, zinc and nickel have some in Congress trying to bring back the steel-made pennies of World War II, and maybe using steel […]