PRINCETON, New Jersey - May 4, 2010 - More than 2 million Amerikans became fully employed in April, as Gallup's "underemployment" rate fell 1.4 points to 18.9% - the lowest level for this new measure since Gallup began tracking it in December 2009. While part of this improvement is the result of the normal pickup in hiring at this time of year - and the addition of temporary census workers - it is good news both for those becoming fully employed and for the economy as a whole.

BEIJING, China - May 3, 2010 - Investor Marc Faber said China’s economy would slow and possibly crash within a year as declines in stock and commodity prices signal the nation’s property bubble is set to burst.

NEW YORK - May 3, 2010 - Today, millions of Amerikans say that they believe that the United States is on the verge of a major economic collapse and will soon be entering another Great Depression. But only a small percentage of those same people are prepared for that to happen.

WASHINGTON - May 1, 2010 - Regulators on Friday shut down three banks in Puerto Rico, two in Missouri, and one each in Michigan and Washington state in a round of closings that brought the number of U.S. bank failures this year to 64 and reduced the federal deposit insurance fund by billions of dollars.

NEW YORK - April 29, 2010 - Since the U.S. Depression began in December 2007, Congress has extended the length of unemployment benefits for the jobless three times. Now, the lawmakers may have reached their limit.

NEW YORK - April 29, 2010 -  Decisions by homeowners to walk away from mortgages they can afford are accounting for an increasing share of defaults, according to Morgan Stanley.

About 12% of all mortgage defaults in February were “strategic,” up from about 4% in the middle of 2007, New York-based Morgan Stanley analysts led by Vishwanath Tirupattur wrote in a report today. Borrowers are more likely to stop paying their mortgages the higher their credit scores and the larger their loans, they said.

LISBON, Portugal - April 28, 2010 - As markets looked for the next European domino to be toppled by Greece's debt crisis this week, all eyes turned to Portugal – a country that has become relatively poorer, in European terms, over the past decade. It was no comfort that neighbouring Spain also came under the spotlight today as the debt crisis threatened to engulf the eurozone's fourth largest economy.