WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that it plans to keep interest rates ultra-low even after unemployment falls close to a normal level, which it thinks could take three more years.

WASHINGTON --- Good riddance to the first half of 2011 -- six months that are ending as sour for the economy as they began.

...incentives to get a college degree, given the gaps that we observe," said Lisa Barrow, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The income gap narrowed slightly from five years earlier, when college graduates made nearly twice as much...

NEW YORK -- Under the steady gaze of police officers with body armor and automatic weapons, workers were confronted with ID checks and bag searches following the most specific domestic terrorism warnings since the 2001 attacks, which have sent ripples of anxiety as far away as the West Coast.

...still remains tight but less so than in recent months," said William Strauss, a senior economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Respondents say they plan to spend money on computers and communications but hold back on building costs...

LANSING, Mich. - Thirty years ago, Dan Fairbanks looked at the jobs he could get with his college degree and what he could make working the line at General Motors Corp., and decided the GM job looked better.

CHICAGO - The gleaming new Winzeler Gear factory annex looks for all the world like a model of manufacturing success for the 21st century.

WASHINGTON -- The banking system continued to operate largely free of Y2K glitches on Tuesday, the second New Year's business day, after a problem at a regional Federal Reserve bank was fixed.

WASHINGTON -- Prices for wheat, corn and other major crops are heading down, according to a government forecast that is certain to increase pressure on Congress to approve another big bailout of the agricultural economy.\r

...than 20 past and present employees, all of them black, filed a discrimination lawsuit Wednesday against the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The class-action lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, alleges the bank refused to promote...