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New claims for unemployment benefits rose in the latest week, but not by enough to shake the conviction that the job market is still healing.

The nation’s banks and credit unions had their best year since 2006, as a slowly recovering economy led to modest loan growth and lower levels of nonperforming loans.

The pace of job creation by private employers accelerated more than expected in February, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday.

The U.S. economy is improving faster than economists had expected. They now foresee slightly stronger growth and hiring than they did two months earlier - trends that would help President Barack Obama's re-election hopes....

Bloomberg reports that U.S. consumer confidence is almost back to pre-recession levels. But is that actually good news? Over at the Big Picture, James Bianco says it’s not clear why “consumer confidence” is a useful metric. It’s not correlated with jobs. Or retail sales.

In case you haven’t noticed, the economy is actually getting better. Noticeably better. Yes, it’s been painfully slow in coming, as we continue to tack against strong headwinds coming from Europe and the Middle East as well as the strong ebb tide created by the wind-down of fiscal stimulus. And certainly the recovery has been halting and uneven.

The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell slightly last week to the lowest point in four years, a further sign that the U.S. job market is improving.

Stronger hiring and higher pay and savings should support solid growth for the economy in coming months. That was a key message that emerged Wednesday from a report on economic growth in the final three months of 2011. The economy grew at a 3 percent annual rate in the October-December quarter, up from a previous estimate of 2.8 percent, the Commerce Department said.

Wall Street's bulls have reason to celebrate: The Dow Jones industrial average closed above the psychologically important 13,000 mark for the first time since the financial crisis began in 2008.

The German parliament approved a second, euro130 billion ($173 billion) loan package for Greece on Monday after Chancellor Angela Merkel warned lawmakers that it would be irresponsible to abandon the country to bankruptcy.