Post office

When Postal Service cuts take effect this spring, it will not only slow mail delivery, but eliminate the possibility of first-class letters being delivered in a day. Here's what you need to know about the changes, and some tips to keep you from going postal.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has announced his latest initiative to save the post office from bankruptcy. (Hint: Improving customer service isn't a part of it.) His master plan: Hike the cost of mailing a letter for real people, and cut prices for junk mail.

Could your bank teller could go postal? Offering basic consumer banking services in the form of prepaid debit cards is just one of many ideas the U.S. Post Office is considering to boost its bottom line. And even with stamp costs going up to 45 cents, the USPS is in dire need of outside-the-box solutions to its budget woes.

If the USPS went into bankruptcy, would anyone care? Not according to former UPS board member Gary MacDougal, who argued in a scathing attack last week that "the rapid growth of email, online bill paying," and private parcel delivery firms like UPS and FedEx has made the Post Office obsolete. Statistics suggest he's right.

As the U.S. Postal Service works feverishly to close its budget gap, UPS is taking advantage of the turmoil to highlight how much more innovative its brown-clad couriers can be, compared to their blue-suited cousins.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe warned that the Postal Service is on "the brink of default" as he battles to keep his agency solvent. Without legislation by Sept. 30, the agency "will default on a mandated $5.5 billion payment to the Treasury," Donahoe told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is considering cutting as many as 120,000 jobs. Facing a second year of losses totaling $8 billion or more, the agency also wants to pull its workers out of the retirement and health benefits plans covering federal workers and set up its own benefit...

In DailyFinance's new video series, My Three Cents, personal finance columnist Regina Lewis discusses tips and trends affecting today's consumer market. This week's focus: continuing trouble at the U.S. Postal Service.

The U.S. Postal Service warned that it will miss federal payments totaling an estimated $6.8 billion by October, unless the government steps in.

Can you say image problem? For the first time in the more than 70 years that Gallup has been measuring the popularity of unions, in 2009 more than half the public didn't approve of them. The current showdowns have plenty of precedent when it comes to transformative moments for organized labor.