A deep-seated anxiety about how soon the Federal Reserve will raise rates has caused the widest chasm between short- and long-dated Treasury yields in 20 years.

Chinese private equity funds are emerging in big cities as China promulgates new regulations aimed at creating a homegrown private equity industry, one that Beijing hopes will strengthen the country’s capital markets and fuel private sector growth in an economy overly dependent on government investment.

Russia has the world's most fraudulent economy and attempts to stamp out white-collar crime have done little to stop its spread during the global financial downturn, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a survey.

If AOL's announcement on Thursday of another 2,500 job cuts is anything to go by, the painful layoffs that have ravaged the media industry over the past year are nowhere near over.

European heads of states appointed Baroness Catherine Ashton as the European Union's foreign-policy chief, the so-called first EU Foreign Minister, Thursday evening.

The global economy is heading toward a sustained recovery but given the risks of another downturn it is too soon to withdraw stimulus, International Monetary Fund Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky said on Friday.

Stocks are being held hostage by the dollar and the S&P 500 is in a "struggling trend" that could push the index lower or lead to "horizontal" gains, Bill McLaren, independent trader, told CNBC.

It is "not quite time yet" to raise interest rates in the U.S., Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, told CNBC Thursday.

Malaysia's economy contracted by 1.2 percent in the third quarter from a year ago, much less than the 2 percent contraction forecast in a Reuters poll, due to booming domestic demand, signaling the last quarter of the trade-dependent Southeast Asian country's recession.

Whiel Wall Street profits have rebounded to record levels, the Street is not showing signs yet of a real employment recovery.    

European Union leaders named  Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, who is little known outside his own country, as the bloc's first president.

The dollar rose for a second straight session Friday as risk tolerance declined, with investors cutting exposure to assets and currencies perceived as higher risk ahead of a holiday-shortened week in the United States.

Banks that are considered too large to fail should be dismantled rather than "coddled," Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher said on Thursday.

Asian stocks stumbled on Friday, after stocks on Wall Street fell for a second straight session on renewed concerns a U.S. economic recovery was losing momentum.

US reliance on a growing Chinese economy to continue to spur growth of the American economy could be an ill-fated notion, Bill Gross, Pimco's founder and CEO, told CNBC.