LONDON - The International Monetary Fund has called on Britain to do more to support the economic recovery, urging the government Wednesday to speed up investment in infrastructure and come up with a plan to privatize its bailed out banks. In a review of Britain's policies, which had been hotly anticipated after the IMF last month criticized the government's focus on budget austerity, the IMF applauded the greater "flexibility" shown by Treasury chief George Osborne.

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said late Monday he will begin tapping into two government employee retirement funds to buy more time before the U.S. Treasury is faced with the prospect of defaulting on the national debt. In a letter to congressional leaders, Lew said that he would tap the civil service retirement and disability fund and a similar fund that covers retired postal workers. The law allows him to remove investments from these funds to clear room for more borrowing until Congress votes to raise the debt limit

The US budget deficit will fall to $642 billion this year from $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2012, helped by surging revenues and repayments from housing agencies rescued in the 2008 crisis, the Congressional Budget Office forecast Tuesday. That was more than $200 billion lower than the deficit projected by the CBO in February. The decline to the smallest US fiscal shortfall since 2008 was "mostly as a result of higher-than-expected revenues and an increase in payments to the Treasury by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."

The United States's yawning annual budget deficit narrowed in April as government coffers brimmed with the largest monthly surplus in five years, official data released Friday showed. The federal budget had a surplus of $112.9 billion for the month of April, as tax payments surged ahead the mid-month due date for annual income tax filings for 2012, according to Treasury Department numbers. The surplus was almost double the $59.1 billion surplus registered in April 2012.