WASHINGTON (AP) -- Despite persistent layoffs, the economy seems to be faring better than it was at the start of the year.

The Labor Department said Thursday that new jobless claims jumped unexpectedly last week. And the number of people continuing to receive unemployment aid rose more than expected.

The figures indicate that jobs remain scarce even as the economy shows some signs of recovering from the longest recession since World War II.

A revised reading on gross domestic product -- the broadest measure of the nation's output -- said the economy posted a 5.5 percent annualized decline from January through March. That was slightly better than the 5.7 percent estimate made a month ago. Economists generally think the economy is shrinking at a slower pace -- about 2 percent -- in the current quarter.

The main forces behind the small upgrade in the first quarter: Businesses didn't cut stockpiles of goods as much, and imports dropped more sharply than previously estimated.

On Wall Street, investors shrugged off the unexpected rise in jobless claims and focused on positive earnings reports from homebuilder Lennar Corp. and home furnishings store Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. The Dow Jones industrial average added about 140 points in afternoon trading. Broader indices also rose more than 1 percent.

Initial claims for jobless benefits rose last week by 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 627,000. Economists

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Bank of America Corp. said Thursday it will raise more money than the government said it needed in order to withstand a deepening recession.

Upon the completion of a debt exchange later this week, the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank will have raised $38 billion. That is $4.1 billion more than the $33.9 billion the Federal Reserve said last month the bank needed to protect against potential losses should the economy worsen.

The move was largely expected within the investment community.

What was not expected, if anything, was the speed with which Bank of America raised the money, said Tony Plath, finance professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

"Remember, they were essentially given 30 days to submit a plan. Heck, they raised the capital in 30 days," Plath said. "That's proof that they have credibility in the capital market and that they did have residual assets that they could in turn dispose of in order to raise capital."

In its latest move to boost capital, Bank of America said it has preliminarily agreed to exchange $3.9 billion in depository shares for common stock as part of a debt exchange offer. Settlement of the exchange, which was oversubscribed, is expected to be completed Friday.

The bank has also agreed to convert about $10.7 billion in preferred stock into 789 million shares of

Using liability-driven investing to better meet your retirement goals.

It works for the big dogs, and it might just work for you. "Liability-driven investing," a strategy that has been sweeping the world of pension-fund management, could be the next big trend in retirement planning for wealthy individuals.

LDI, as it's known, calls for matching or at least explicitly considering your future expenses when designing a portfolio, rather than focusing on asset growth alone. The idea is to assemble investments that will generate enough gains, and at the right times, to cover everything from greens fees to a bequest to your alma mater. So far, it's mostly being used for portfolios of the super-rich, but experts say it can work just as well for the merely well-off.

LDI certainly has taken hold among large U.S. pension funds, about half of which now use it or are considering doing so. The big liabilities of these funds -- future payments to retirees -- resemble long-term bonds and are extremely dependent on interest rates. If interest rates fall, it's harder for a fund to earn the money needed to make the payments. Therefore, "the heart of most LDI strategies used by pension funds is to try to take this interest-rate risk off the table, so that assets and liabilities move in lock step when interest rates change," says Mark Ruloff, the director of asset allocation at Watson Wyatt Investment Consulting.

This can mean something as simple as investing the whole fund in bonds with the same interest-rate sensitivities as the liabilities. But liability-driven investing also has more sophisticated variants. For instance, a pension fund may run two separate portfolios -- one focused on hedging interest-rate risk