The federal government pays out millions of dollars to dead people each year — including deceased retired federal workers, according to a new report. In the past five years, the Office of Personnel Management has made more than $601 million in bene

Robert Shiller, an economics professor at Yale University and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, talks about the U.S. housing market and economy, and his prescription for government action to boost growth and employment. Read t

Americans are depressed about their economic prospects but continue to spend their way through their latest downturn in sentiment, new consumer confidence data showed Tuesday. The latest survey from the New York-based Conference Board, a business-res

Stocks end a touch firmer having chopped in mixed trading as Wall Street digested mixed economic data and cloudy Fed comments. Equities returned to red in the immediate wake of the afternoon release of Federal Reserve meeting minutes, then firmed ane

Alan Krueger, the Princeton economist recruited to lead President Obama’s economics team just before the president is set to announce a major new jobs initiative, has done some influential research on unemployment. In one of his most recent stu

The Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank president said U.S. unemployment remains “disturbingly high,” yet cautioned economic recoveries after financial crises tend to be very slow. Narayana Kocherlakota, during an audience question-and-answe

Consumers’ confidence in August dropped almost 15 points to the lowest level since April 2009 as worries about the economy fueled the wildest stock market swings since the financial meltdown in 2008. At a time when Americans are increasingly wo

StateOfTheEconomy tracks the latest economic trends, we are new and working hard to know our would be readers. Most of our posts will be in question format or brief summaries of current economic events. We look forward to providing you with useful re

Trading activity has been weak and Wall Street has been overhauling its payment practices. Large trading houses may see 15 percent to 20 percent in compensation being cut. Compensation is the biggest cost in Wall Street and it’s the toughest to tac

Hot technology companies are readying for IPO while some like LinkedIn are already in the stock market. But valuations are way in the north even for companies without any solid revenues; Twitter is valued at $8 billion with its new round of funding w