Denver Post Real Estate/Business

The economy is looking bleaker as new applications for jobless benefits rose last week to the highest level in almost six months.

A decline in exports and a sharp rise in imports pushed the U.S. trade deficit in June to its widest point since October 2008, raising new concerns about the weakening economic recovery.

A decline in exports and a sharp rise in imports pushed the U.S. trade deficit in June to its widest point since October 2008, raising new concerns about the weakening economic recovery.

The nation isn't creating nearly enough jobs to reduce persistently high unemployment.

Ford Motor Co. said it plans to bring back to its plants nearly 2,000 union jobs that had been outsourced to suppliers in the U.S. and overseas.

The U.S. response to the financial crisis probably prevented a depression, slowed a decline in gross domestic product and saved about 8.5 million jobs, economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi said.

In the shadow of Colorado's largest wind farm, the new-energy economy is taking a back seat to old-fashioned oil. Drilling rigs are springing up in areas of Weld County largely bypassed by the natural-gas boom of the past decade. Dying agricultural communities where boarded-up storefronts outnumber open businesses envision a fiscal jolt from oil that could keep the towns' fragile economies afloat.

The disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street is growing. Americans' confidence in the economy faded further in July, according to a monthly survey released Tuesday, amid job worries and skimpy wage growth.

About 80 percent of the financial reform bill approved by Congress and awaiting the president's signature doesn't affect the state's locally based banks, reckons Barbara Walker, executive director of Independent Bankers of Colorado.

State businesses are confident they can grow this quarter despite ambiguous signals from the national economy, according to the latest survey from the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business.

Stocks tumbled around the world Tuesday, sending the Dow Jones industrials below the 10,000 mark, as downbeat economic news intensified fears that a stumbling global economy could send the United States back into recession.

The lowest mortgage rates since 1971 are propping up the metro-area housing market, giving consumers an incentive to lock in low rates on home purchases.

Part warehouse grocery, part conventional supermarket. That's what customers will experience at SmartCo Foods, a new chain that opened the first of its five Denver-area stores Tuesday.

Colorado's $440 billion export business with China will benefit from a stronger yuan, though business leaders say forces stronger than China's agreement to allow flexibility in its exchange rate will ultimately decide how well their products sell in the world's most populous nation.

In 2004, construction superintendent John Zimpel returned to this once-flourishing gambling town to freshen up a rental property.

Government hires are keeping the Colorado job market from slipping while the private sector struggles to gain traction, new employment numbers show.

The number of people filing new claims for jobless benefits jumped last week after three straight declines, another sign that the pace of layoffs has not slowed.

Bankers would retain some say over the operations of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks but would lose their ability to vote for regional bank presidents under a House-Senate deal Thursday on a broad financial-regulation bill.

Colorado residents found it easy to part with their valuables at a buying roadshow Wednesday — everything except their gold. The price of gold has risen almost 350 percent since 2000, although critics have warned that the commodity might be due for a correction.

Colorado's green economy has been boosted by more than $796 million in venture-capital investment and $300 million in federal stimulus funds in the past decade, according to a study on green-job growth in the West.