US News

The US government's debts have ballooned so badly the National Debt Clock in New York has run out of digits to record the spiralling figure.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily blocked a judge's decision to immediately free 17 Chinese Muslims at Guantnamo Bay into the United States.

The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it was lending billions of additional funds to cash-strapped American International Group Inc.

Under the program, the New York Federal Reserve Bank will provide $37.8 billion in additional cash to certain domestic life insurance subsidiaries of AIG in return for investment-grade, fixed-income securities.

Having tried without success to unlock frozen credit markets, the Treasury Department is considering taking ownership stakes in many United States banks to try to restore confidence in the financial system, according to government officials.

One of the most pressing questions Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain would confront if elected president is how to build on the security gains in Iraq at a time when troop levels have begun to drop.

The relentless slide in home prices has left nearly one in six U.S. homeowners owing more on a mortgage than the home is worth, raising the possibility of a rise in defaults — the very misfortune that touched off the credit crisis last year.

The world economy will slow sharply this year and next, with the United States likely sliding into recession reflecting mounting damage from the most dangerous financial jolt in more than a half-century.

President George W. Bush on Wednesday signed legislation that will allow the United States and India to open up nuclear trade, saying the two countries are "natural partners."

President George W. Bush will sign legislation that boosts funding for Amtrak and other passenger-rail services, setting up a broader debate next year over federal transportation spending that highlights differences between the two major candidates seeking to succeed Mr. Bush.

Pavlo has no doubt that when federal investigators get done sorting out the mess that began with the subprime mortgage market, some of the people responsible will be going to prison, just as he did in 2001. They’ll go for the same reason: not because they are bad people, but because when things started to go wrong, they started to make bad decisions that eventually became criminal ones.

The Supreme Court justices sounded closely split today on whether environmental laws can be used to protect whales and other marine mammals from the Navy's use of sonar off the coast of Southern California.

The Federal Reserve and six other major central banks from around the world slashed interest rates Wednesday in an attempt to prevent a mushrooming financial crisis from becoming a global economic meltdown.

A federal judge ordered the Bush administration Tuesday to immediately free 17 Chinese Muslims from Guantanamo Bay into the United States, a dramatic ruling that could set the course for releasing dozens of other prisoners at the naval facility in Cuba.

After the federal government approved the third greatest robbery of taxpayers in American history, AIG executives treated themselves to a $440,000 get-a-way at the prestigious St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California. All this while thousands of families continue to lose their homes and unemployment has creeped slightly above 6 percent. USA Today reported the following: Let me describe some of the -- the charges that -- that the shareholders who are now U.S. taxpayers had to pay. Check this out. AIG spent $200,000 for hotel rooms, and almost $150,000 for catered banquets. AIG spent -- listen to this one -- $23,000 at the hotel spa and another $1,400 at the salon. They were getting their manicures, their facials, their pedicures and their massages while the American people were -- were footing the bill. And they spent another $10,000 for -- I don't know what this is -- leisure dining. Source: http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/10/aig-execs-went.html

On Wall Street, the fear refuses to go away.

Stocks plunged on Tuesday afternoon — shedding 200 points in the final hour of trading alone — despite reassurances from the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, that the central bank was prepared to lower interest rates, words that many investors had said they were waiting to hear.

A new Gallup poll finds that just 9% of Americans are “satisfied with the way things are going in the United States." This is the lowest such reading in Gallup Poll history.

Executives at the American International Group Inc. hid from its auditors the full range of risky practices at its financial products division even as losses mounted, according to documents obtained by a congressional panel examining Tuesday the chain of events that forced the government to bail out the conglomerate.

What went wrong?

Last week, the nation's political leaders said the financial system would collapse unless they passed a $700 billion rescue package for Wall Street. On Monday, the first day of trading after the plan passed, the financial system continued to melt down anyway.

Here's why: The plan developed by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to buy troubled U.S. mortgage assets might not start for another month. And, despite its huge price tag, it already seems paltry compared with the scale of the rapidly evolving global crisis.

radical new plan to jump-start the engine of the financial system

As pressure built in the credit markets and stocks spiraled lower around the world on Monday, the Federal Reserve was considering a radical new plan to jump-start the engine of the financial system.

Sleeping in a room with a fan lowers a baby's risk of sudden infant death syndrome by 72 percent, a new study has found.