Financial regulations proposed by the president would result in leaner and simpler institutions that don't carry the weight of the system on their marble columns.

As lawmakers in cash-strapped states wrestled this year with revenues that kept on falling, both campaign promises and long-standing reform efforts got pushed to the side.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, optimistic California can finish its budget negotiations in a few days, is willing to reconsider his proposed cuts to education, the San Francisco Chronicle said.

With joblessness rising, President Barack Obama said Thursday he was "deeply concerned" about unemployment and conceded that too many families are worried about "whether they will be next" to suffer economically.

Thursday's announcement that U.S. employers cut 467,000 jobs in the month of June is a "disappointment," but still an improvement over the 700,000 a month that were shed in earlier months this year, said Christina Romer, chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

New orders for U.S. manufactured goods jumped 1.2 percent in May, their largest increase in nearly a year, the Commerce Department reported on Thursday, beating analysts' expectations.

The slide in employment is representative of what the US economy faces for years to come, Pimco's Bill Gross says.

Stocks capped their third straight down week with a sharp drop Thursday as a weak jobs report muzzled all the green-shoots talk and investors hunkered down. The Dow lost 1.9 percent this week.

California's controller will start paying many of the state's bills with IOUs as soon as Thursday after lawmakers failed to close the state's worsening budget deficit, adding a new measure of indignity to a state sinking deeper into dysfunction.

Employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, driving the unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, suggesting that the economy's road to recovery will be bumpy.

Stock futures slid deeper into the red Thursday after a report showed more jobs were lost last month than expected.

Euro zone unemployment crept up to its highest level in 10 years in May, data showed on Thursday, casting a shadow on prospects for any quick recovery from the worst economic recession since World War Two.

Out-of-work with no place to land, the legions of America's unemployed are growing. The Labor Department is scheduled to release a report Thursday expected to show the nation's unemployment rate edging closer to double digits.

Stocks got the second half off to a positive start Wednesday after logging their best quarter in a decade.  The Dow gained 0.7%.

The $787 billion economic stimulus package may not live up to lofty expectations, painting President Obama into a policy corner.