Economy Watch - Coverage of the financial crisis from The Washington Post and around the Web - July 4, 2010

New weekly jobless claims fall by 21,000, an eight-week low

UPDATED at 12:21 p.m. with impact of automakers: The number of new jobless claims filed last week dropped by 21,000 to 454,000, the lowest number in eight weeks. Even more promising, the number of continuing claims dropped by 224,000 to...

By Frank Ahrens | July 8, 2010; 12:21 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Data
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Stocks give back much of their opening gains, now trading mixed

UPDATED at 11:47 a.m.: Stocks are trying to hold onto their momentum as mid-day trading draws near, but it's a fight. All three major indices are off their highs of the day and have been trending downward since shortly after...

By Frank Ahrens | July 8, 2010; 11:47 AM ET | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Wall Street
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Video: Talking about the market swoon and unemployment

Here's me talking about the recent market swoon, private-sector unemployment and other fun topics....

By Frank Ahrens | July 7, 2010; 5:00 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Video
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Stocks put together two winning days; Dow surges 274 points

Stocks staged their first back-to-back winning days since mid-June, after starting off slowly but then picked up strength and staged a day-long rally of the sort we haven't seen in a while. The Dow rose 274 points, breaking back up...

By Frank Ahrens | July 7, 2010; 4:03 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Wall Street
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Stock rally runs out of steam as buyers go home

UPDATED at 2:49 p.m.: Well, today's little bargain-hunting rally looks like it had enough steam to last until, oh, about noon. Since then, it's been all downhill as the buyers have gone home. Stocks dipped briefly negative after 2 p.m....

By Frank Ahrens | July 6, 2010; 2:49 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Wall Street
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Clarification on the early use of the telegraph in financial transactions

I wrote this piece in Sunday's paper, in which I wrapped up a lot of dismal economic data from last week and noted that most of the wobbly economic recovery we've had so far has come from various government stimuli,...

By Frank Ahrens | July 6, 2010; 12:38 PM ET | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Data
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