Towns move back to the concept of a walkable multiuse town center.
Demographic shifts and changing values will increase demand for pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use communities in both urban and suburban settings, according to John McIlwain of the Urban Land Institute. “The age of suburbanization and growing homeownership is over,” McIlwain said in a recent report, “Housing in America: The [...]

Customer records were stolen from
British bank HSBC’s operation in Switzerland
The German government says it plans to buy a CD containing customer data apparently stolen from British bank HSBC’s operation in Switzerland. The move has enraged Swiss officials, but it already appears to be bearing fruit. Berlin expects a wave of tax evaders to turn themselves [...]

a new study shows that many people, when faced with a financial crisis, are not putting their mortgages first.
TransUnion, one of the big credit bureaus, recently released a report showing that an increasing number of consumers are choosing to pay their credit card bills before their monthly mortgages.
My grandmother Big Mama had a key financial [...]

Migrant workers wait for a bus to return them to the labor camps outside Dubai, but many of the jobs have dried up.
When his overnight flight landed, Abdul Wahib walked out of Kochi’s palm-fringed airport and hugged his family. After 24 years of working in the United Arab Emirates, he was home. He carried a [...]

A couple looking at a shop in Greece as the economy has suffered a major deficit crisis.
Governments in Athens, Madrid and Lisbon struggled on Friday to quell fears of a looming debt crisis in Europe that is pummeling the euro and rippling across global markets, as authorities vowed to impose fiscal austerity and plug their [...]

1 in 8 American’s use food banks
One in eight Americans — 37 million — received emergency food help last year, up 46% from 2005, the nation’s largest hunger-relief group reports today.
 

Americans’ love affair with top-shelf booze cooled last year as the recession took a toll on high-priced drinks..  A report by an industry group shows people drank more but turned to cheaper brands. They also drank more at home and less in pricier bars and restaurants.
 

Small business turning to alternative financing when big banks turn them down
In the glory days of the digital photo frame business, when his products were still a novelty and shoppers were flush with cash, getting a bank loan to manufacture them was a cinch, Michael Levy says.  We would say: ‘We got a $1 million order [...]

After hitting a stiff economic head wind in 2009, business air travel appears to be reviving.  The heads of major airlines, including United, American and Delta, said they’re seeing the early indications of a resurgence as corporations get reacquainted with the idea of spending money on travel.
 

Harvard University has the biggest endowment
Average college endowment returns plummeted 18.7% last year, the worst decline for higher education since the Great Depression, a report says.  Overall, higher education endowments fared better than other indexes; the widely used S&P 500 was down 26.2% over the same period, the 12 months ending last June 30. And, [...]

The month of January offered those who track the ups and downs of the U.S. economy 92 significant data releases and announcements to digest. That’s according to a calendar compiled by the investment bank UBS. The number doesn’t include corporate earnings, data from abroad or informal indicators like, say, cardboard prices (a favorite of Alan [...]

Passengers wait in line at a Southwest Airlines tcket counter
Carriers trying to fill planes to the max routinely overbook flights to account for no-shows, leaving some travelers without seats. But those bumped passengers have rights.  Based on the numbers, America’s major airlines are doing a better job of getting us to our destinations on time [...]

Many luxury apartments in New York offering incentives to renters
Scores of stalled construction projects can be found scattered around New York City, but one category of building that doesn’t seem to have been sidetracked by the recession is the luxury apartment rental.
 

California employers cut more workers in December, capping a dismal year in which the state lost more than half a million jobs.  Construction and related industries take a big hit in 2009. Payrolls shrink again in December, though the unemployment rate stays at 12.4%.
 

Joseph Stiglitz
In an exclusive extract from his new book, Freefall, the former World Bank chief economist, Joseph Stiglitz, reveals why banks should be split up and why the West must cut consumption. 
In the Great Recession that began in 2008, millions of people in America and all over the world lost their homes and jobs. Many [...]

The six most vunerable areas for colleges
After looking at all the signals, there is no other way to describe it. Colleges are under attack.
Several legs of the financial stools upon which they are sitting have been kicked out from under them, forcing higher tuition rates on an already cautious base of consumers. But money is [...]

Wives earning more than husbands
In a trend that researchers call “the rise of wives,” women are increasingly better-educated than their husbands and have emerged as the dominant income-provider in one of five marriages, according to a new report released today.
 

Many time share owners stuck trying to sell their time shares
For Stacey Udell, a Craigslist ad enticing her to own a piece of property in the Bahamas for $3,000 was too good to pass up.  The accountant from Cherry Hill, N.J., jumped on it, and became one of 6 million Americans who own a time share, shared vacation [...]

The first leg of the financial crisis seems to be behind us and most European economies are reemerging from recession. Attention is now shifting towards the sustainability of public finances. The latest European Commission forecasts show the public debt-to-GDP ratio for euro-zone countries rising to 88% in 2011 from 69% as recently as 2008. Government [...]

Sales of Yo-Yos have increased in the past year.
The yo-yo is set to be this year’s biggest playground craze, according to retailers who have reported a ten-fold increase in sales over the past year.  The simple toy, which first became popular during the decade following the Wall Street crash of 1929, is taking off once [...]

This home in San Antonio facing foreclosure without imminent relief
The Obama administration’s mortgage relief plan provided help to only 7% of borrowers who signed up last year, another black mark for the struggling program.
 

Stacks of money at the Federal Reserve in San Francisco
Wall Street firms aren’t the only banks that had a banner year. The Federal Reserve made record profits in 2009, as its unconventional efforts to prop up the economy created a windfall for the government.
 

China has the next real estate bubble waiting to be popped
With property prices soaring in key cities, many investors and bankers worry that China has the next great real estate bubble waiting to be popped.  The Chinese government is worried, too. On Sunday, the nation’s cabinet, citing “excessively rising house prices” in some cities, said [...]

As the second decade of the 21st century begins, we find ourselves at one of those relatively rare moments in history when major power shifts become visible to all. If the first decade of the century witnessed profound changes, the world of 2009 nonetheless looked at least somewhat like the world of 1999 in certain [...]

China surpassed $1.2 trillion in exports in 2009.
China overtook Germany in 2009 to become the world’s top exporting nation, another milestone in China’s rapid rise and growing economic influence. But in a year of global economic turmoil and weakness, China achieved the top ranking because its exports fell only 16 percent, while Germany’s exports fell [...]