The Federal Open Market Committee voted 9-1 today to lower the rate at which banks lend to each other to 3 percent from 3.5 percent. Just eight days ago the Fed lowered that rate by three-quarters of a percent.

A big change may be ahead in the relationship you have with your electric utility. That's because the worrisome carbon footprint is stomping all over the options electric utilities have to meet increasing demand for power.

Housing prices in the Phoenix metro area continue to plummet and the rate of decline has accelerated, according to Karl L. Guntermann, a professor of real estate and finance at the W. P. Carey School of Business.

Electric utilities are in the business of selling electrons. The more they sell, the more they earn. But today, a whirlwind of forces is sweeping electron sellers into counterintuitive activities such as promoting conservation and offering rate structures designed to cut peak consumption.

A groundbreaking study has finally put a dollar figure on a previously unanswered question: how much do physicians' practices, due to government regulation, pay to ensure their poorest patients get the right prescription drugs?

Immigration has been controversial throughout American history. Roger Daniels' book "Guarding the Golden Door" is a scholarly yet eminently readable account of U.S. immigration policy.

In Arizona alone, non-citizen immigrant workers contribute $29 billion to the economy. That's 8 percent of the state's output, created by about 280,000 workers. State and local tax revenues resulting from their economic activity totaled $1.5 billion. What if that labor supply became unavailable?

As the debate over immigration has intensified in Arizona and across the country, the discussion has become louder, more heated and less civil.

Harsh employer sanctions are scheduled to become law in Arizona on January 1, focusing a national spotlight on the state that the New York Times called a "striking laboratory" for immigration reform.

The economy has not been a source of comfort and joy this year. The collapse of the housing market, the accompanying sub prime debacle and the credit crises has produced pain, for individuals and institutions. But how much does it hurt?