WASHINGTON — When the Federal Reserve meets this week, it’s likely to affirm a message it intends to help lift the economy: that consumers and businesses will be able to borrow cheaply well into the future — even after unemployment ...

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WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve officials in 2007 underestimated the scope of the approaching financial crisis and how it would tip the U.S. economy into the worst recession since the Great Depression, transcripts of the Fed’s policy meetings that year show. ...

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WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve policymakers expressed broad support last month for the Fed’s plan to buy bonds to support the U.S. economy. But they differed over how long to keep buying bonds to drive down long-term interest rates. Minutes of ...

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WASHINGTON — The Justice Department says an international investment bank will pay more than $1.5 billion in penalties in three nations to resolve charges of trying to manipulate an interest rate used as a benchmark in global banking transactions. Attorney ...

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WASHINGTON — The rating agency Standard & Poor’s stunned the world a year ago by stripping the U.S. government of its prized AAA bond rating. The downgrade of long-term U.S. Treasurys threatened to sow chaos in financial markets, driving up ...

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WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve appears to be moving toward announcing some new step to try to energize the troubled U.S. economy. The question is whether it will do so after its policy meeting this week. Probably not, many economists ...

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WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers are criticizing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for failing to alert Congress four years ago that banks could manipulating a key global interest rate. Geithner defended his actions at a hearing Wednesday of the House Financial Services ...

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WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke painted a dark picture of where the U.S. economy is headed if Congress fails to reach agreement soon to avert a budget crisis. “It would probably knock the recovery back into a recession ...

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WASHINGTON — Consumer prices were unchanged in June, held down by cheaper gas. Outside the volatile food and energy categories, inflation was mild. Weak economic growth is limiting the ability of companies to raise prices. The tame inflation was underscored ...

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WASHINGTON — The American job machine has jammed. Again. The economy added only 80,000 jobs in June, the government said Friday, erasing any doubt that the United States is in a summer slump for the third year in a row. ...

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