WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of new people signing up for unemployment benefits last week shot up to the highest level in more than two years, fresh evidence of the damage to a national economy clobbered by housing, credit and financial crises.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that new applications filed for unemployment insurance jumped by a seasonally adjusted 38,000 to 407,000 for the week ending March 29. The increase left claims at their highest point since Sept. 17, 2005, following the blows of the devastating Gulf Coast hurricanes.

"This report supports the view that the jobs market is deteriorating toward recessionary conditions," said T.J. Marta, a fixed-income strategist at RBC Capital Markets.

The latest snapshot of labor activity was worse than economists had anticipated. They had predicted claims would be much lower, around 365,000.

In other economic news, the Institute for Supply Management said the nation's service sector -- including retailers, hotels, insurance companies and other firms -- contracted in March but not as much as the month before. The institute's index registered 49.6 last month, compared to 49.3 in February. A reading below 50 indicates contraction, while a reading above 50 indicates growth.

On Wall Street, investors took the latest batch of economic news in stride. The Dow Jones industrials

This is just my opinion... so don't be mad at me.

Alan Schwartz is full of it. There is no way, shape or form Bear Stearns can and would go out of business just because of rumors. Give me a break. You cannot go out of business unless you put yourself in the position to go out of business. Bear Stearns made HUGE BAD BETS. Case closed!

The latest pin cushions are the short sellers. Lehman is full of it. Cramer is full of it. One is just making an excuse. The other is just making an excuse for horrible stock picking and horrible market timing. Bottom line...SHORT SELLERS are a small lot. SHORT SELLERS do not cause stocks to go down. In fact, it is the opposite. If a stock wants to go up it goes up in spite of the shorts and squeezes the short sellers. If I owned a public company and I knew things were going well, I would welcome all the shorts. They cannot drive prices down like these people say. So blame the short sellers for your stock price. Don't blame:

Funds leveraging up - some over 30-1.

Lenders actually enabling these funds by giving them the money to leverage.

Lenders giving money to people who couldn't make the first payment.

Borrowers who took the money even though they knew they could not make the first payment.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve's unprecedented actions to prevent the collapse of Bear Stearns were taken to preserve the "integrity and viability of the American financial system" and did not represent any kind of bailout, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday.

Bernanke told a congressional panel that the Fed and other government agencies were informed on March 13 that without help Bear Stearns Cos. would have to file for bankruptcy the next day, forcing the central bank to make the difficult choice of deciding whether to allow the nation's fifth largest investment bank to collapse or provide assistance.

"Given the current exceptional pressures on the global economy and financial system, the damage caused by a default by Bear Stearns could have been severe and extremely difficult to contain," Bernanke told the Joint Economic Committee.

As part of marathon negotiations over the weekend of March 15-16, the Fed originally agreed to take $30 billion in securities off the books of Bear Stearns to facilitate the acquisition of the firm by JP Morgan Chase & Co. for an original price of around $2 a share.

After an uproar over the terms of the sale, the share price was boosted to around $10 and JP Morgan agreed to assume the risks for the first $1 billion in losses that might occur, lowering the Fed's potential

The rebound in financial stocks is a golden opportunity to sell, as earnings will not return to the values before the beginning of the credit crunch, editor of the 'Gloom, Doom and Boom' report and long-standing bear Marc Faber told CNBC Europe Wednesday.

If troubled banks are not rescued, as was the case with Bear Stearns, their problems risk spreading through the whole financial system, Faber said, adding that "all financial institutions are toxic."

"The bubble in financial stocks has burst and that signals that the fundamentals aren't going to come back the way they were previously," Faber, who is managing director of Marc Faber Limited, told "Squawk Box Europe."

"Overall I think we can have a rebound in financials; I would rather use the rebound as a selling opportunity," he added. "In my opinion, financial sector earnings will not come back to where it was prior to the credit crisis we had."

His comments echoed remarks by European officials on Wednesday that the end of the financial markets turmoil was still far from sight.

The peak of the global financial market crisis has not yet been hit, European Union economic and monetary affairs commissioner Joaquin Almunia told German daily Frankfurter, while European Central Bank Governing Council member Axel Weber said it was too early to give the all-clear on the financial

The happiest people combine work, leisure and extra income.

Baby-boomers asked to define R&R are more likely to say "rock 'n' roll" than "rest and relaxation." That's a good thing, given that the old-fashioned definition of retirement as 25 years of leisure is built on two misconceptions, says gerontologist and author Ken Dychtwald.

The first, says Dychtwald, is the notion that "if you remove work from the lives of productive, intelligent and active individuals, they will still be happy." On the contrary, says Dychtwald, "for many, retirement becomes a time of boredom and isolation."

The second misconception is one of entitlement: the expectation that the working population will be able to subsidize 78 million baby-boomers, the first wave of whom turn 62 this year.

The truth is, both paid and volunteer work will be available to enterprising baby-boomers. And work not only helps pay the bills, it also feeds the soul. In fact, 75% of boomers say they want to keep working (but not full-time), and more than half want to start a new career, says Dychtwald, author of Age Power: How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old (Tarcher/Putnam, $14.95).

As the first boomers turn 62, they are redefining what it means to grow old. Although the most senior among them can start collecting Social Security benefits now, many of them won't. Instead, they'll stay on

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For the first time, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged the U.S. could reel into recession from the powerful punches of housing, credit and financial crises. Yet, he was coy about the Fed's next move.

With home foreclosures swelling to record highs and job losses mounting, Bernanke on Wednesday offered Congress an unflinching -- and more pessimistic -- assessment of potential damage to the national economy.

"A recession is possible," said Bernanke, who is under immense political and public pressure to turn things around. "Our estimates are that we're slightly growing at the moment, but we think that there's a chance that for the first half as a whole there might be a slight contraction."

Under one rule of thumb, six straight months of a shrinking economy would constitute a recession, but Bernanke wasn't getting into that. "A recession is a technical term," he said. "I'm not yet ready to say whether or not the U.S. economy will face such a situation."

Whether or not the economy already has fallen into its first recession since 2001 -- and many economists believe it has -- the housing debacle and other economic woes are a major concern for homeowners, job losers and investors. That means they're a concern to Congress and the presidential contenders, too.

The Fed and the White House have been thrust into crisis-management mode.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Further weakness in the manufacturing sector and construction industry underscored concerns that the U.S. economy has fallen into recession, though most analysts believe a downturn will be mild and relatively short-lived.

The Institute for Supply Management said Tuesday that manufacturing contracted for a second consecutive month in March as manufacturers grappled with weakening order books and rising prices for raw materials.

The institute's manufacturing index registered 48.6 last month, a bit stronger than the 48.3 reading for February, which had been the weakest in five years.

Readings below 50 indicate contraction, while those above 50 show growth.

In Washington, the Commerce Department said that construction spending fell again in February as home building tumbled for a record 24th straight month.

The department said overall construction activity dropped 0.3 percent in February, reflecting weakness not only in home building but also in nonresidential activity. Only government building projects showed a gain for the month.

Gary R. Thayer, senior economist with Wachovia Securities, said the latest figures provided "more

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil futures extended their slide Tuesday as the dollar gained ground, making commodities such as energy futures less attractive to investors seeking a hedge against inflation. But trading was choppy as a debate among investors over oil's direction played out in the marketplace.

Retail gas prices, meanwhile, slipped slightly from the record they set one day earlier.

Investors who previously bought commodities such as oil as a haven against inflation and a falling dollar sold Tuesday as the greenback strengthened against the euro and other currencies. The stronger dollar also made oil more expensive to overseas investors.

Many analysts say oil investors have taken most of their price cues in recent months from gyrations in the dollar.

"The dollar's stronger, and (therefore) oil's weaker," said Brad Samples, an analyst with Summit Energy Services Inc., in Louisville, Ky.

Light, sweet crude for May delivery fell 60 cents to settle at $100.98 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after earlier falling as low as $99.55. Oil futures fell $4.04 a barrel on Monday.

But oil prices surged as high as $102.55 at times Tuesday as the early dip below the psychologically

Retirement is more than just numbers. You need to look at all the puzzle pieces before you can put them together, says Money Magazine’s Walter Updegrave.

Question: I’m 55 years old and would like to retire at 60. I’ve got $30,000 in a money market account and $170,000 in my 401(k). I’ll have a pension of $1,500 a month and I’ll collect Social Security of about $1,800. Do I have enough to retire at 60? –Liz, Los Angeles, Calif.

Answer: Trying to figure out whether you can afford to retire - at 60 or any other age, for that matter - is essentially a process of putting together pieces of a financial jigsaw puzzle.

Some of the puzzle pieces are the income you’ll collect in retirement - your $1,500-a-month pension and your $1,800 monthly Social Security check. Others are the assets from which you can draw income - the $30,000 you have in a money-market account, the $170,000 in your 401(k) and whatever growth you’ll have in those accounts from additional savings plus investment earnings over the next five years.

The idea is to assemble the various pieces and then see whether a picture of retirement life emerges - that is, one that reflects a post-career standard of living that’s acceptable to you.

Problem is, it’s virtually impossible to develop even the fuzziest image of retirement life in your case