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Questions about whether Bank of America breached its duties to shareholders come at an inconvenient time for embattled CEO Ken Lewis.
According to documents released Thursday by a top state prosecutor, the BofA (BAC, Fortune 500) chief met repeatedly late last year with federal regulators and the bank’s board to discuss the deteriorating condition […]

Editor’s note: This story contains profanity.
Internet search company Yahoo Inc. announced Tuesday that it would slash 5% of its workforce, as it reported a first-quarter profit that fell sharply from a year earlier but still managed to beat Wall Street’s forecasts.
Shares of Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) rose more than 5% after hours.
The company’s layoffs […]

Financial regulators must strike a delicate balance between protecting consumers and not choking off credit, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Friday.
"We should not attempt to impose restrictions on credit providers so onerous that they prevent the development of new products and services," Bernanke said in a speech in Washington, D.C. "That said, the […]

President Obama on Tuesday outlined the administration’s efforts to restart the economy and warned that tough times and decisions lie ahead, according to prepared remarks of a speech he’ll present in Washington.
Obama pointed to more job losses and foreclosures as well as "difficult and unpopular choices" when it comes to restructuring the auto industry […]

Oil prices followed the stock market higher Thursday after Wells Fargo released a bright earnings outlook.
The San Francisco-based bank predicted a much better-than-expected net income of about $3 billion for the first quarter.
Crude investors cheered the stock market’s reaction, sending oil prices up $2.86, or 5.8%, to settle at $52.24 Thursday. Prices reached a […]

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has asked city agencies to cut another 7,000 jobs as the city’s finances continue to deteriorate in the recession.
In a letter to agency heads, Mark Page, the head of the city’s Office of Management and Budget, said that tax revenues continue to fall short of projections, forcing the city […]

Britain’s Conservatives will consider changing the Bank of England’s inflation target to take more account of housing costs if they win the next election, said George Osborne, the party’s finance spokesman.
The central bank currently is required to keep inflation at 2 percent based on the consumer price index. The gauge, which doesn’t include […]

Add Bernie Madoff and Marc Dreier to the long list of excuses grownups now use to buy more time. Think of it as the "dog ate my homework" for federal prosecutors.
The Madoff Excuse entered the legal lexicon in a March 16 letter to U.S. federal judge Loretta A. Preska, who is presiding over the […]

The International Monetary Fund, dismissed as increasingly irrelevant when the world economy was booming, will now wield more than $1 trillion to help bring it back to life.
Leaders from the world’s most powerful nations, meeting in London yesterday, agreed to triple the money the IMF can lend to rescue crisis-stricken nations, to $750 […]

Housing prices in 20 major cities fell at record monthly and annual levels in January, according to a private report issued Tuesday, with prices down 2.8% from December and 19% from a year earlier.
The S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index, a comparison of price changes recorded when homes are resold, is considered to be one […]