BY ALL INDICATIONS, the Philippine economy is already in recession. With last week’s announcement of an insignificant 0.4-percent first quarter growth in the economy, government statisticians forthrightly described the economy as “teetering into recession.”

US TREASURY Secretary Timothy Geithner, aiming to persuade China that its US investments were safe, pledged that the Obama administration was firmly committed to ratcheting down huge deficits as quickly as it can once economic recovery is assured.

More than 50% of General Motors Corp. bondholders said Sunday they would support a sweetened deal to swap the company’s $27 billion debt for stock in a restructured, leaner GM.

Old-fashioned loans in unprecedented amounts are going bad, and the overall quality of loans is deteriorating at the fastest pace ever.

Looking for a mortgage that exceeds $729,750? Not long ago, you would have been charged about 8 percent interest on a loan that large — if you could find a lender willing to grant you one. Now, rates on these “jumbo” loans are much more affordable, having settled in the low 6 percent range, on [...]

May 30 (Bloomberg) — Five people who say they are former Chinese political prisoners sent to jail after pro-democracy protests in the country in 1989 asked China’s government to provide them with pensions in an open letter dated yesterday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission approved the P10-billion bond issuance of conglomerate SM Investments Corp. Documents filed with the SEC showed that SM Investments would issue P5 billion worth of five and seven-year bonds and another P5 billion to cover over- subscription.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has said that the current level of investments from the Republic of Korea has not yet caught up with the expectations of both governments.

WASHINGTON, May 30 (UPI) — Federal debt last year amounted to a record $545,668 per U.S. household — a 12-percent spike in just one year, government sources said.

In case you missed them, here are the top 10 Personal Finance stories from MarketWatch for the week of May 25-29: