US pending home sales plummeted 7.7% in January 2009 from the prior month to their lowest level in at least eight years as a deepening recession bites, according to a real estate trade group. The National Association of Realtors said its pending home sales index fell to 80.4 in January, a level that was 6.4% below the January 2008 reading.

President Barack Obama has launched a bid to transform the US political landscape, with a 3.55-trillion-dollar budget mapping out the sweeping scale of his administration's ambitions. The document handed to Congress bristled with spending on healthcare, climate change, the military and education, included a rosy prediction of a return to growth next year and raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

The involuntary furlough, once a staple of boom-and-bust blue-collar industries like mining or automaking, is making its way into white-collar workplaces across the United States as employers try to cut costs quickly amid a deepening recession. With some 2.5 million jobs lost in the past six months, few furloughed workers are complaining about the unpaid time off.

The US housing market slump is nowhere near over and home prices will probably keep falling well into next year, one of the property market's best-known economists said.

In congressional testimony, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke depicted an economy undergoing a "severe contraction." But Bernanke said the recession could end in 2009, paving the way for a "year of recovery" in 2010.

Not since Franklin Roosevelt delivered his first fireside chat, eight days into his presidency, have Americans been more hungry -- and more desperate -- for economic leadership. And not since FDR has there been an economic agenda as bold or ambitious, or as likely to reshape American capitalism. Just a month in office, Obama has already pushed through additional fiscal stimulus equal to 5% of the country's economic output.

Home prices in top US cities fell a record 18.5% in December amid an unending home mortgage crisis at the epicenter of financial turmoil, fresh data showed Tuesday.

US Consumer prices rose in January for the first time in six months as energy costs rebounded, government data showed on Friday, easing fears of deflation amid a severe economic downturn.

South Korean electronic giant Samsung Electronics has said it had asked a US trade panel to block imports of Eastman Kodak's digital cameras in an ongoing patent row.

Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said the current global recession will "surely be the longest and deepest" since the 1930s and more government rescue funds are needed to stabilize the US financial system.

As President Obama prepares to sign the $787 billion stimulus bill, administration officials sought to temper expectations, warning that the economy has not yet reached bottom and that increased economic activity as a result of the legislation would "take time to show up in the statistics."

The latest figures paint a gloomy picture of the US economy. Consumer spending, which makes up two-thirds of the economy, fell for the second quarter in a row, by 3.5%. Most economic forecasters are predicting that the US slowdown will last around two years, with the economy returning to weak growth by 2010.

Applied Materials announced that its president and CEO Mike Splinter met with President Obama and CEOs of several of America's largest companies at the White House today to discuss the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Splinter focused his remarks on key aspects of the clean technology agenda, including incentives for solar energy adoption as a way to create new jobs as the new administration and both houses of Congress look to reinvigorate and stimulate the US economy.

Sales at US retailers rebounded in January after six consecutive months of declines, rising 1% as stores cut prices and offered giveaways and three-for-one deals to move inventory after a dismal holiday shopping season, the government reported Thursday. Sales at electronics and appliance stores rose 1.6%.

Democratic leadership sources say they have worked out a way around the disagreement between the Senate and House over education funding in the economic stimulus bill.

The new federal rules limiting executive compensation announced by President Obama Wednesday may affect only a handful of the nation's most battered financial institutions currently.

Planned layoffs at US firms in January reached their highest monthly level in seven years, according to a report released on Wednesday, as the more than year-old US recession took an increasingly heavy toll on employment.

Unlike past US recessions, chipmakers can't count on boosting overseas sales this time because the economic slowdown has so quickly gone global. Slowing exports is a challenge for the chipmakers, which do most sales overseas. Three of the largest US chipmakers are taking different tacks to cut manufacturing costs in the face of a steep global recession.

US consumers cut spending for a sixth straight month in December and their incomes shrank, according to a government report on Monday that underscored the rapid deterioration in the economy.

CEOs from US-based leading technology companies, in a meeting with President Obama, came out strongly in support of the economic recovery package moving through Congress and called for policies that make the US the most attractive destination for businesses, workers and capital.

The unanimous vote by House Republicans against President Obama's stimulus plan provided an early indication that the GOP hopes to regain power by becoming the champion of small government, a reputation many felt slipped away during the high-spending Bush years.

The sleek racing machine that was the US economy is unlikely to return any time soon despite the huge repair efforts now underway. Instead, it probably will continue to sputter and threaten to stall for years to come.

The deepening financial crisis, which is undermining the government's rescue efforts, is prompting federal officials to revisit the original bailout measures. "There's no doubt that we needed to stabilize the banking system," Obama told CNN's John King Friday.

An economic stimulus bill being crafted by Democratic leaders in the US Congress and aides to President-elect Barack Obama will cost about $850 billion, according to a government source.

Economic weakness continued to spread across the nation as real estate markets remained in distress and consumers kept their pocketbooks closed, according to the latest Federal Reserve report on regional economic conditions.

More than half a million Americans lost their jobs in December, making 2008 the worst year for US employment since World War Two, while Europe's woes mounted as output from its factories plunged.

As the economy heads deeper into a recessionary abyss, business tax cut ideas that seemed to be nonstarters just a few short months ago are suddenly back on the table. Take the incoming Obama Administration's embrace of a measure that would lengthen the period for money-losing companies to write off net operating losses against profits from the current two years to four or five years.

US President-elect Barack Obama wants to delay next month's nationwide switch to digital television service because of "major problems" for consumers.

The US holiday shopping season is the worst since at least 1970 due to the recession, heavy discounting and harsh winter weather just before Christmas, the International Council of Shopping Centers said Tuesday.

Democratic lawmakers want to pass a far-reaching bill to save the economy by Inauguration Day on Jan. 20. That's the goal, but the reality may be a little different. The reason: The measure will be big and complex--exceeding US$700 billion by some estimates.

The figures, from the retail data service of MasterCard Advisors, show the 2008 holiday shopping season was the weakest in decades, as U.S. consumers cut spending as they confront a yearlong recession, mounting job losses and tighter credit.

"There is a reasonable probability ... of the U.S. economy starting to recover at the end of 2009 or the start of 2010," the IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a newspaper interview on Thursday.

Walmart is officially tight-lipped about the buzz that its shelves could be hosting a US$99 4MB iPhone by the end of the month. But mobile device experts have plenty to say, and it's all good.

The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, making official what most Americans have already believed about the state of the economy. The last two recessions (1990-1991 and 2001) lasted eight months each, and only two of the 10 previous post-Depression downturns lasted as long as a full year, according to the NBER. The current recession is one of the longest downturns since the Great Depression of the 1930's.

Americans expect to limit credit-card purchases, seek out bargains and stretch spending as recession fears put a damper on their holiday cheer. If the gloomiest predictions come true, that could spell disaster for many more store chains and their employees, and provide insight on how long it may take the economy to recover.