Category: VOA Economics Report

Mark Hurd got credit for building Hewlett-Packard into the world’s largest technology company. H-P is the top seller of personal computers and printers. It had sales last year of almost one hundred fifteen billion dollars. Mister Hurd became chief executive officer five years ago after H-P ousted Carly Fiorina. Later he also became chairman. Under …

BlackBerry service is facing limits or bans in some countries over the issue of government access to information on its network. Research in Motion, or RIM, makes BlackBerry communications devices. They run on the company’s network and secure software. The company is based in Waterloo, Canada. BlackBerry has forty-six million users worldwide. In August, the …

On July twenty-first, President Obama signed into law the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. He said: “These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history.” Together, the changes represent the biggest rewrite of financial rules since the Great Depression. At the heart of the two thousand three hundred pages in the bill …

One of the largest air shows in the United States is also one of the largest trade shows in the aircraft industry. AirVenture took place in July at an airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Ron Wagner is from the Experimental Aircraft Association, which holds the event each year. He said almost every major manufacturer and many …

voalearningenglishRecently, the United States Supreme Court decided a case on the property rights of inventors. The question was whether a business method is enough of an invention to receive a patent. Patents are a form of intellectual property. They give legal protections to individuals and companies against the copying of their inventions. Bernard Bilski and …

The International Monetary Fund has raised its prediction for world economic growth to four and six-tenths percent this year. That is a half-percentage point higher than the estimate in April. The IMF credited expansion in Asia and growing demand in the United States. But the lender’s chief economist also warned that “downside risks have risen …

Concerns about a double-dip recession were back in the news at the end of June. Some economists warned of the possibility of another downturn if governments withdraw growth measures too quickly. But others warned of the dangers of letting deficits and debts continue to grow. Leaders of the world’s biggest economies agreed to cut their …

In June, leaders and top finance officials from the world’s twenty biggest economies gathered in Toronto, Canada. One of the big issues they discussed is how and when to reduce deficits and economic growth measures as conditions improve.Chancellor Angela Merkel defended Germany’s decision to cut spending by one hundred billion dollars over four years. But …

Factory labor built China into the world’s third largest economy, after the United States and Japan. Now something else is building: labor tensions. China bars labor unions independent of the Communist Party. But George Haley at the University of New Haven in Connecticut says labor unrest is common and is not new. There has been …

The month of June means one more big test for many students finishing college — a test of the job market. Wish them luck. Americans age twenty to twenty-four faced an unemployment rate in May of fourteen and seven-tenths percent. That was five percentage points higher than the national rate.The National Association of Colleges and …

BP is one of the world’s largest energy companies. It reported a profit of about six billion dollars in the first three months of this year. That was more than double compared to a year ago. Now, BP faces growing political pressure over the worst oil spill in American history. Oil has been flowing from …

People are supposed to be social on a social media website. But choosing to share information is not the same as having it shared for you. And that difference is at the center of debate over privacy on Facebook and other social networks. A free service that makes money by advertising other sites has to …

Officials in Washington recently lost a ruling over their power to enforce competition on the Internet. Now the Federal Communications Commission has a new plan. The F.C.C. currently defines high-speed Internet as an information service. As such, its powers to set rules for broadband service have never been clearly recognized. But telephone service is a …

European Union officials agreed on a debt rescue plan in May. They also got a message from Britain’s new governing parties. William Hague, the new British foreign secretary, said: “It was not difficult to agree between us that neither party is in favor of handing any more powers to the European Union.”In the British elections, …

Greece’s debt crisis has shaken investors in the United States and worldwide. They worry that it could spread far beyond Greece. On May sixth, a day after huge protests in Athens, the Greek parliament approved a series of spending cuts. Greece has to cut thirty billion dollars as part of a bailout deal with the …

Sometimes, financial news can be hard to understand. A former official of Goldman Sachs investment bank explained what his group did before the financial crisis this way. He said: “Our desk began to accumulate short positions, purchasing protection on individual securities through credit default swaps, largely from external C.D.O. managers who asked us to bid …

Air traffic over much of Europe came to a halt for six days in April because of the huge cloud of ash from a volcano in Iceland. The economic costs added up as airlines flew everyone to where they were trying to go. At its worst, the crisis affected nearly a third of world air …

President Obama turned his attention to financial reform after his victory in March on health care. On April fourteenth he met with congressional leaders from both parties at the White House. He said there are some areas on which Democrats and Republicans can agree. “If theres one lesson that weve learned,” he said, “it’s that …

More than fifty countries and organizations have promised to give more than five billion dollars to help Haiti rebuild after an earthquake destroyed much of the country in January. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the amount of money was greater than expected. Mister Ban, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Haitian President Rene Preval …

Two American rulings could change how information is controlled online and in our bodies. In April, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that current laws limit government power over Internet traffic. The court rejected an order against America’s biggest cable company. In two thousand seven, officials ordered Comcast to stop interfering with file-sharing programs …