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.S. Stocks declined mainly due to disappointing second results by many companies and negative news from markets overseas. The bleak future outlook from some of the companies also led to selloff in the markets. The turmoil in the Chinese market was also noted as an issue by many stock market analysts. Many companies performed better than Wall Street expectations including Google and Amazon. Investors were concerned about bleak outlook for future quarters by some of the companies. .. For S&P 500, healthcare stocks faced the tough time during the week. Nine out of ten major sectors on S&P 500 ended...

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx on Friday said the government is investigating whether four airlines engaged in price gouging after a deadly Amtrak crash in Philadelphia in May disrupted rail service in the Northeast. The Transportation Department sent letters on Friday to Delta, American, Southwest and JetBlue requesting information. Prices on round-trip airline tickets between major cities such as New York City and Washington, D.C., skyrocketed in the wake of the deadly Amtrak derailment, which closed a major stretch of rail line and disrupted travel in one of....

since President Obama took office, the poverty rate among children has soared to 22 percent, with three million more children living in poor conditions, according to an authoritative new report released Tuesday. The 2015 "KIDS COUNT" report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation said that the percentage of children living in poverty jumped from 18 percent in 2008, the year Obama was elected, to 22 percent in 2013....

TIAA-CREF, a Fortune 100 financial-services organization that employs 12,500 workers in more than 100 local offices, announced a "special, one-time Voluntary Retirement Program" on Tuesday in a memo to its employees. The company is offering this "opportunity" to people age 50 and older who have at least 10 years' tenure at the company, or at least five years' tenure for those 55 and up. Eligible employees who choose to participate will receive unspecified financial incentives. We received a copy of the memo from an anonymous tip. TIAA-CREF confirmed the existence of the program and declined to comment further, emphasizing that...

The Supreme Court issued an important ruling last month when it reminded state and local governments that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 bars them from spending federal housing money in a manner that perpetuates racial segregation. Last week, the Obama administration took an even more important step — one that has already changed the decades-long discussion about how to combat residential segregation. It rewrote the rules under the provision of the act that requires state and local governments to “affirmatively further” housing goals by making real efforts to cope with the cumulative results of the discrimination that confined black...

The American Dream of a home is slipping out of reach for millions of Americans, especially African Americans, as house sales hit a 20-year low, according to a new Harvard University study of the U.S. housing market. Instead, house-poor Americans are shifting to rentals with such speed that many areas can barely keep up with demand. Overall, home ownership, the cornerstone of the American Dream, is down to 63 percent, a far cry from the 69 percent registered in 2004. The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University's annual "State of the Nation's Housing" report said current home ownership...

Whether by economic necessity or by choice, as many as one-third of American workers now find themselves piecing together two, three or more on- demand opportunities to make a living. It's called The Gig Economy, or the Sharing Economy. Yet Washington mostly has remained on the sidelines as the U.S. economy, its workforce and the work place, have undergone perhaps the most dramatic transformation in decades. Senator Warner, a former business executive, is committed to bringing this conversation to Washington, working with his colleagues, stakeholders, and the growing “gig economy” workforce, to put forward practical solutions to keep up with...

President Obama's weekly remarks Hi, everybody. My top priority as President is to grow the economy and help more hardworking Americans get ahead. And after the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes, our businesses have now created 12.6 million new jobs over the past 63 months.

The economic recovery is really coming along great. For the third time since the expansion began in June 2009, the U.S. economy suffered a setback. Don’t call it a setback. It’s a strategic retreat. Those ‘optimistic’ estimates keep being revised. Such declines in GDP are rare in economic expansions, pointing to the fragile nature of the current rebound. The economy hasn’t contracted in three different quarters during good times since the 1950s. It’s the fault of the GOP. Also the weather. That’s the weakest reading since frigid winter temperatures derailed growth at the start of 2014. We can’t have an...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. economy went into reverse in the first three months of this year as a severe winter and a widening trade deficit took a harsher toll than initially estimated. The Commerce Department says the overall economy as measured by the gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the January-March period. The revised figure, even weaker than the government's initial estimate of a 0.2 percent growth rate, reflects a bigger trade gap and slower consumer spending. It marked the first decline since a 2.1 percent contraction in the first three months of...

We're about to get some terrible news about the US economy. Sort of. On Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. ET, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release its second estimate of first quarter GDP, which is expected to show the economy contracted 0.8% in the first quarter. The initial reading on first quarter GDP, released on April 29, showed the economy grew just 0.2%. Ahead of that report, Wall Street expected the economy grew 1% to start 2015. Subsequent data, however, showed that the economy was likely even weaker than first estimated to start the year. Some economists, however, either...

Yes, capitalism is working ... for the Forbes Global Billionaires whose ranks swelled from 322 in 2000 to 1,826 in 2015. Billionaires control the vast majority of the world’s wealth, 67 billionaires already own half the world’s assets; by 2100 we’ll have 11 trillionaires, while American worker income has stagnated for a generation. But for the vast majority of the world, capitalism is a failure. Over a billion live on less than two dollars a day. In his “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” economist Thomas Piketty warns the inequality gap is toxic, dangerous. As global population explodes from 7 billion...

According to the results, 60 percent of Americans believe the nation is on the wrong path. The Princeton Survey Research Associates International underlined that 52 percent of those who identified as Democrats, said they had a favorable view of socialism. 33 percent of Independents shared the view. Among other highlights of the survey, Obama's foreign policy is approved by only 37 percent of Americans and not even one in five like the job Congress is doing. Noteworthy, that fifty percent of Americans say they're open to allowing states to repeal federal laws if half or more of the states, representing...

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's report cited stagnant or falling wages among the lowest-income earners, a local jobless rate that remains above state and national averages, and a worsening lack of affordable housing. ... According to the agency's latest biennial count, an estimated 44,300 people are living on the streets, in cars, in abandoned buildings or in shelters and government-funded "transitional housing" on any given night in Los Angeles County. That tally, based on a census conducted in January, is up 12 percent, or nearly 5,000 people, across Los Angeles County, compared with numbers reported from the previous survey...

Under current law, employers are required to pay time-and-a-half wages to employees working more than 40 hours a week only if they earn less than $23,660 annually. The Obama administration is intent on increasing - and likely more than doubling - that salary threshold, according to people briefed on the administration's plans. That change is likely to have significant impact on workers in retail and the food services industry, like a restaurant manger who earns $30,000 a year but works 60 hours a week. "We need a national wage floor that that rises each year, so that its purchasing power...

A recent survey by UC-Berkeley's student assembly found that nearly half -- 47% -- of its Ph.D students were depressed, citing dismal job prospects. About 37% of its master's degree students also reported depression. Even though the once-a-decade report only focused on Berkeley -- one of the most prestigious public universities in the country -- it could spark a wider discussion on the value of graduate education in America. "The largest source of anxiety for me is my job outlook. It is tremendously uncertain and thus fear-inducing," one anonymous graduate student said in their survey response. Job pessimism was the...

US economic growth braked more sharply than expected.... gross domestic product expanded at only at 0.2 percent annual rate....

The U.S. grew at a meager 0.2% annual pace in the first three months of 2015, a period marked by severe weather, a major port dispute and a soaring dollar that curbed American exports. Consumer spending, the main engine of growth, slowed sharply to 1.9%, below the average 2.3% increase since the recovery began in mid-2009.

In the latest sign of a changing housing market, homeownership rates are at a quarter-century low, while the rental-vacancy rate is close to the slimmest proportion in more than two decades, according to government data released Tuesday. The seasonally adjusted homeownership rate, which shows the share of occupied homes in which an owner lives, fell to 63.8% in the first quarter — the lowest proportion since the end of 1989, the U.S. Census Bureau said. Families with income both above and below the median have seen drops in homeownership rates over the past year. Weak income growth and difficult-to-get mortgages...

General Motors will stop making the Chevrolet Volt for four weeks in June and July due to slow sales and to deal with the change to an all-new version of the gas-electric hybrid car. The company says the Detroit-Hamtramck plant that makes the Volt and four other cars will probably stay open through the summer despite plans for the Volt. The factory also is undergoing construction so it can build a new full-size Cadillac CT6 and the 2016 Volt starting late in the summer. Sales of electric and hybrid cars have slowed this year, largely due to low gasoline prices....