Finance & Economics | WPN World People News

According to the Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Index released Tuesday, home prices were down 3.4 percent this year as of October — around a 35 percent drop from their peak.

Unfinished subdivisions like this one in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, Ariz., have led urban planners to suggest "smart decline" strategies that sometimes even dismantle existing infrastructure.

Somalis abroad remit more than a billion dollars a year to relatives in their homeland

Economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean will slow down next year due to the sluggish performance of the world economy and uncertainty and volatility of financial markets, warns a United Nations report released today.
The report estimates that growth in the region will drop to 3.7 per cent in 2012, compared to 4.3 per cent this year.

According to a survey by NPR and the Kaiser Family Foundation, 44 percent of the long-term unemployed and 35 percent of the underemployed are willing to move to another state for a new job.

Javier Polendo, an employee at a largely automated Target.com fulfillment center in Tucson, Ariz., scans items to be shipped to online customers.

The U.S. current-account deficit—the combined balances on trade in goods and services, income, and net unilateral current transfers—decreased to $110.3 billion (preliminary) in the third quarter of 2011, from $124.7 billion (revised) in the second quarter. More than half of the decrease reflected a decrease in the deficit on goods. A decrease in net unilateral current transfers and increases in the surpluses on services and on income also contributed.

Dollar coins gathering dust in the Fed's Baltimore brach.

People wait to see a career adviser at a training center operated by the New York Department of Labor in New York City. NPR and the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a survey on the emotional, physical and financial effects of being without work for a year or more. Nearly 70 percent of respondents would like the government to offer more job training opportunities.