Deficit | featured news

The new tax is expected to be formally announced in the government's first budget on 28 September, but that does not mean there is a sense of panic in France. This new tax will only hit very rich individuals and only for a year or two, to help bring down the government deficit.

Voters have long favored President Obama over Mitt Romney for handling terrorism and advancing the interests of the middle class. Romney, however, has consistently enjoyed a wide advantage on only one issue: the nation’s gaping budget deficit.

French President Francois Hollande has set himself a deadline to turn around the economy by the end of 2014, but having hamstrung the effort with tax rises to meet deficit targets, economists doubt his growth goals will ever fly.

In just three days, a lemonade stand started by 9-year-old Joshua Smith has made over $1,200 to help his home city of Detroit, which has a deficit of more than $100 million.

President Obama’s landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by a member of the board that oversees Medicare financing.

Spain's new government said on Friday the public deficit for 2011 would come in at 8 percent of gross domestic product, well above a target of 6 percent, and announced income and property tax hikes and a civil servant wage freeze in response.

The European Union will call on China this week to boost domestic demand and on the United States and Japan to tackle their public deficits as part of global efforts to rebalance growth, an EU document showed.

President Barack Obama will release a plan on Monday calling for more than $3 trillion in deficit cuts over 10 years, with about half of the savings coming from higher taxes on the wealthy and big corporations.

Egypt will not borrow from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund after revising its budget and cutting the forecast deficit, even though a loan had been agreed, Finance Minister Samir Radwan said Saturday.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Monday that he will immediately halt investments in two big government pension plans so the government can continue to borrow money....