Darden Restaurants cuts profit forecast as diners stay home. Darden Restaurants warned that its quarterly profit will come in below Wall Street estimates and cut its forecast for the..

Jewellery demand buoys gold but dollar a risk. Gold, a key player in the commodities boom earlier in the year, has turned in recent weeks into one of its most visible losers.

Consumer confidence bounces. Consumer confidence recovered more than expected in August as worries over inflation eased, while financial markets combed through a slew of housing data for reasons to hope the worst is over for the moribund..

Two Fed Myths That Need Debunking. There are two things you may have heard about the Federal Reserve Board, both of which are wrong.

Transparency Sought as Speculators' Activity in Oil Market Grows. Big Wall Street firms representing the interests of pension funds, endowments and wealthy individuals around the country have grown in just a few years from minor participants in the oil markets to their most dominant force.

Fed Report Portrays Stressed Economy. The economy has continued slowing this summer across most of the nation as prices keep rising sharply, according to a report by the Federal Reserve, indicating that the squeeze that has made times tough for Americans throughout 2008 shows no sign of letting up.

Fresh credit fears hit financials, unnerve market. U.S. stocks fell sharply on Monday as credit concerns hounded financial stocks while global growth worries hurt big technology and industrial companies.

Stocks mixed as rising oil curbs investors' enthusiasm. Stocks turned lower in thin volume Tuesday as concerns about the path of Hurricane Gustav pushed oil prices higher and offset..

Bernanke: Financial System Must Be Strengthened. JACKSON HOLE, Wyo., Aug. 22 -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke Friday called for a strengthening of the nuts and bolts of the financial system and said the Fed and other regulators should focus more on the stability of the overall system, rather than just the health of individual compan..

Key Early Days for New Hires. You've sifted through employment ads, interviewed for jobs and finally accepted a position. Then comes the real test -- your first 30 to 90 days at work.

As dividend payouts decline, investors can do more than pull out. It hasn't been easy being a dividend investor of late. As the economy stumbles, companies are shrinking their payouts at a pace not seen in nearly two decades.

Economic Challenges Draw Out Divisions at Fed. As Federal Reserve policymakers sit down this morning to begin deciding whether to adjust interest rates, they do so at a time of exceptional internal disagreement over what approach the central bank should take.

Inflation Climbs to 17-Year High. Americans paid more last month not only for gas and food but also for a variety of goods and services, including clothes, shoes, hotels and air travel, as inflation unexpectedly jumped to a 17-year high.

U.S. stocks drop sharply, Dow loses 242 points. All the major U.S. stock indices were down around 2% on Monday, in a dismal start to the week.

Travelers Turn to Public Transit. Soaring gas prices are pushing more Americans to take public transit, with streetcars, trolleys and other light rail experiencing a 10.3 percent increase in ridership for the first quarter of the year, according to a report released yesterday by the American Public Transportation Association.

Banks' Health Questioned as Wachovia Posts $8.9 Billion Loss. Concerns about the health of the nation's banks continued to mount yesterday as Wachovia and SunTrust -- two of the most active in the Washington region -- as well as other financial institutions disclosed they were still being pounded by the mortgage crisis.

Fed Ends String Of Rate Cuts. The Federal Reserve left a key interest rate unchanged yesterday, ending a long campaign of interest rate cuts, as the central bank indicated that it was increasingly worried about inflation. But the Fed offered no sign that it was planning rate hikes in the near future to combat soaring prices.

New Nikon is first SLR to shoot video. Video clips on point-and-shoot digital cameras are great: Why not use them on cool digital SLRs as well? Nikon hopes to hammer..

Steel, Forging a Comeback. The U.S. steel industry is enjoying a new era of prosperity less than a decade after crippling production costs and lower-priced imports helped trigger a huge wave of bankruptcies that some thought would leave it permanently tarnished.

Housing Bill Won't 'Perform Miracles'. Even as a huge bipartisan majority in the Senate voted yesterday to send a sprawling housing bill to the White House, economists, consumer advocates and other analysts said the package of programs for struggling homeowners and shaken mortgage lenders is unlikely to relieve the foreclosure crisis..