The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits was unchanged last week at a seasonally adjusted 374,000, suggesting slow improvement in the job market.

Many elderly people's home equity might represent their only retirement savings, and many are drawing from that through reverse mortgages.

Former members of a congressional panel that oversaw bailouts during the financial crisis are condemning a tax break for insurance giant American International Group. They say it amounts to an extra bailout worth billions of dollars.

The Dow Jones industrial average on Tuesday finally reclaimed the ground it held before the carnage of the Great Recession bailouts, bank failures, layoffs by the million and a stock market panic that cut retirement savings in half.

Old child support debts could cost thousands of poor men their only income next year because of a policy aimed at reducing the cost to the government of mailing paper checks to pay federal benefits.

Companies that were bailed out during the financial crisis still owe U.S. taxpayers nearly $133 billion. Treasury's plans to recoup that money have been slowed by the volatile stock market and weakness among smaller banks.

U.S. factories are roaring back from the depths of the recession, cranking out more machinery, vehicles and energy.

The number of people applying for unemployment benefits dropped last week to its lowest level since April 2008, extending a downward trend that shows the job market strengthening.