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According to the New York Times, “a flurry of deals in the last month” signal restored confidence in corporate America.

Are things getting better or worse? Jobless data could prove either. Two reports on unemployment—one leading the New York Times’ business coverage, and the other, Bloomberg’s exclusive news section—underscore the diverging conclusions one can easily make from the mounds of reports. According to the NYT, “job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000" and up from January's 4-to-1 ratio.

Apparently there’s something sufficiently compelling about meeting in Pittsburgh that the G-8 has decided to expand permanently into the G-20.  As a detailed, Page One Wall Street Journal article puts it: “[T]he G-20 will become the permanent council for international economic cooperation, eclipsing the Group of Eight.” This will have the effect of spreading out global financial decision-making away from the United

It’s conference-palooza this week. First came Monday’s climate change confab at the United Nations. Presidents of various nations—both developed and developing—gave speeches from the U.N.’s famous green marble lectern in New York vowing to help curb the effects of climate change. But how will it happen? Still largely unclear, according to the New York Times. Both Barack Obama and Chinese president Hu Jintao were “guarded in their positions,” opting to go big on rhetoric instead.

Slack—“the unused portion of an economy’s productive capacity”—is apparent across the United States, the Wall Street Journal reports. The evidence: Thousands of unused airplanes, train cars, vacant hotel rooms, and unemployed Americans. Just how much slack is out there and how quickly it will go away is going to be up for debate when Federal Reserve officials meet this week. There’s disagreement within the Fed on the issue.

"In 14 states and the District of Columbia at least a tenth of the work force was unemployed in August," according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report and the New York Times. Ten percent, a sort of magic threshold, has officially been broached in large swaths of the country in which manufacturing jobs are simply not returning with the more general economic recovery that other statistics say the country is experiencing.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is said to have issued subpoenas to five current and former directors at Bank of America (BAC). He’s trying to determine which bank executives were aware of large losses and bonus payouts at Merrill Lynch just before the bank’s takeover last year. “A big unanswered question as we look back on the financial crisis is—where were the boards?” Cuomo told the New York Times in an e-mail.