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WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans unexpectedly pledged an immediate review of President Barack Obama's jobs proposals on Friday as he launched a public campaign for urgent passage of his day-old $447 billion program of tax cuts and new spending. "The time for gridlock and games is over," the president declared. "Nothing radical in this bill," Obama told a large crowd at the University of Richmond on the afternoon after his dramatic speech to Congress. "Everything in it will put more people back to work and more money back in the pockets of those who are working. Everything in it will...

Despite a politically and economically tumultuous start to the month of August, CEO confidence stayed steadily pessimistic. Although the index did rise – for the first time in months and by only 0.4 percent—it still remains at a low 5.30 out of a possible 10. The Index, Chief Executive’s monthly gauge of CEOs’ perceptions of overall business conditions, has seen a 17 percent drop from February’s 2011 high of 6.39. Now, only 45.3 percent of CEOs expect business conditions to be at least ‘good’ in the next year, up from July’s 41 percent. Despite the debt ceiling drama and the...

Politics: These days, what would a firm that outsourced 400,000 U.S. jobs be called? The answer: labor union. Monday's Canada-Colombia free-trade pact is its masterpiece. Leo Gerard, the proudly Canadian president of the United Steelworkers Union, is one of many who ought to stand up and take a bow. He and his fellow Big Labor union bosses loudly opposed the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement, using their political muscle to keep the already-negotiated deal on ice in Congress and the White House for nearly five years. It's come at a massive cost to American workers' jobs. Gerard's native land put its...

Stocks finished near session lows in choppy trading Wednesday, with the Dow and S&P wiping out all of the previous session's gains led by financials, as investors continued to cautiously monitor developments in the European banks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down over 500 points, wiping out the previous session's 429-point rally. The blue-chip index has had triple-digit moves in four of the last five trading days. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also finished sharply lower. The CBOE Volatility Index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, soared more than 25 percent.

Stocks took a sharp nosedive in another choppy day Monday to finish at session lows as investors fled from risky assets following S&P's downgrade of U.S.'s credit rating last week in addition to ongoing economic jitters.

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SHANGHAI — China, the largest foreign holder of United States debt, said Saturday that Washington needed to “cure its addiction to debts” and “live within its means,” just hours after the rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s long-term debt. The harshly worded commentary, which was released by China’s official Xinhua news agency, was Beijing’s latest effort to express its displeasure with Washington. (snip) “The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” read the...

If it had been a scene in “Atlas Shrugged,” the guy would have disappeared into the secrecy of Colorado with a shadowy figure who we would later learn to be John Galt. In real life, the story will probably be more complex. But I wonder how long it’s going to be before businesspeople really do start walking away and deciding it’s not worth doing business in America today. Or it it already happening and we just don’t know it? The man you see in the picture at the right is named Ronnie Bryant. He operates coal mines in Alabama. I’d...