The Fed’s policy-making committee made no change in its ultra-low interest rate policy and said in a statement it expects moderate economic growth over the coming quarters and then a gradual pick-up.

U.S. consumer credit surged much more in December than many expected and was the second consecutive month Americans took on more debt

Earnings outpaced spending in December, pushing the U.S. savings rate up to 4.0 percent from 3.5 percent in November. The question is, economists say, where do we go from here?

The Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates at their super-low levels reflects its concern about the state of the economic recovery in general, especially the connected future of the housing and job markets.

As much as one quarter of the drop in the unemployment rate between October 2009 and January 2011 can be attributed to the exhaustion of extended unemployment insurance benefits, according to economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

As the economy begins to slowly piece itself back together after the Great Recession, many are still wondering how it all happened. What went wrong? How could this have been prevented? Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz tackles those questions and more in his analytic book “Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy.”

Liaquat Ahamed’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lords of Finance” weaves international exchange rates, foreign reserves and the inter-war period’s “barbarous relic” – gold – together from the vantage point of four men who directed the fates of millions toward the granddaddy of all economic crises: The Great Depression.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke Thursday in Chicago. (Charlie Mead/MEDILL)

A year after the Federal Reserve released the results of its bank “stress tests,” Fed Board Chairman Ben Bernanke offered a hopeful, if tepid, economic outlook.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (Charlie Mead/MEDILL)

In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, the Federal Open Market Committee said the rock-bottom federal funds rate would continue to hang below 0.25 percent “for an extended period,” even as policymakers cite gains in the labor market.

Photo from C-SPAN

As the global financial markets unraveled, and words like “derivatives”, “credit default swaps” and “collateralized debt obligations” seeped into America’s lexicon, Brooksley Born stayed quiet.

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