The Bush administration's top economic advisors say immigration benefits native-born workers in the United States.

The Federal Reserve is taking into account several measures, such as proof of income from borrowers, no penalties for early mortgage payments, and a guarantee that property taxes and insurance bills are covered to recover high-risk mortgages market.

A jump in energy costs pushed up US producer prices more than expected 0.9 percent in May.

U.S. stocks headed for a moderately higher open Wednesday after retail sales showed the largest increase in 16 months, signaling higher gas prices might not be hitting consumers as hard as some on Wall Street had feared.

U.S. retail sales rose by 1.4% in May, the largest seasonally adjusted gain in 16 months, the Commerce Department reported on Wednesday.

Longer-term interest rates have risen sharply in the United States this past week and that has raised concerns about the health of the already depressed housing sector. Central bank officials said Monday that the weak housing market could shave about one percent off U.S. economic growth this year. That is a substantial hit to an economy that in the first quarter registered an annualized growth rate of an anemic 0.6 percent.

When the U.S. Federal reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke announced on Tuesday that a slowdown in housing construction would remain a drag on economic growth "somewhat longer" than expected, the dollar exchange rate dropped against the euro immediately.

U.S. O.6 percent economic growth in the first quarter of 2007 is the worst result got in over four year period. The anticipated showing was 1.3, twice more than the real one. Moreover, the economy lost its pace of 2.5 percent, which was the showing for the final quarter of the last year.

Some of the world's leading economists, historians, and social scientists will be gathering at the Oxford Union on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 May for a conference on the "New Face of American Capitalism and its Impact on the World." The conference is being organised by Oxford University's Rothermere American Institute and is being held in honour of The New York Review of Books and its long time co-editors, Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein, who died last year.