For some reason, car sales continue to surge. Consumer spending has improved, but only modestly. The same could be said of unemployment. Cars and light trucks remain the second most expensive asset people hold after their houses.…
Whatever hope there has been for a real estate market recovery was crushed today and Case-Shiller issued its data for prices in the top 10 and top 20 markets. Data through January 2012, released…
With unemployment falling, and most gauges of consumer confidence having ticked up recently, it is not unusual that the Gallup economic confidence level would reach a four year high. This runs back to January…
The green economy often is cited as a key driver of the national economic recovery. At the very least, it is creating jobs. The total number of jobs related to green products and services…
Fed Chairman Bernanke recently stated that, even with monetary easing, the U.S. economy could be dragged back toward recession because of risks to the recent trend in job creation. The main engines of gross…
NokiaNokia’s (NYSE: NOK) new flagship smartphone, the Lumia 900, will not carry a premium price in the U.S. The smartphone’s retail price will be as low as $99.99 and AT&T (NYSE: T) will begin to…
OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría became the latest leader to say that Europe’s economic and sovereign debt trouble could be great enough to overwhelm current bailout amounts reserved by the region’s nations to rescue troubled sovereigns.…
German consumer activity is being undermined by high gasoline prices. That is the conclusion of Germany’s premier economic survey firm GfK Group. The firm published its comments in its “Consumer Climate Study for Germany for March…
Increasing numbers of mutual funds have performances tied to huge investments in Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). (Reuters) Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, is in China to address production labor problems. (Reuters) The European Union begins an…
Flickr, Images of MoneyThe S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities will be released today. It is one of the critical barometers of home prices and is usually a fairly good basis on…
Tim Cook, Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) new CEO, has gone to China because he hopes to find resolutions to several problems which have dogged the world’s largest company based on market capitalization. Among these are…
German consumer activity has begun to be undermined by gas prices. That is the conclusion of Germany’s premier economic survey firm GfK Group. The firm published its comments in the “Consumer Climate study for…
Robert Murray http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1449653Gas prices in the US continue a relentless move higher as each day passes. The carefully watch AAA Fuel Gauge put the average cost of a regular gallon of gas in America…
The Keystone XL Pipeline, a political football between environmentalists and oil firms that want to move more crude from Canada to the coast of Texas has a rival. According to the Wall Street Journal:…
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited with President Obama at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea. The discussion was about arms. It probably should have included talks about oil as well. The U.S. needs crude prices to…
Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti said Spain may be the next flash point in the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, according to Bloomberg. Apparently he has forgotten that global capital markets investors sold down the…
American companies that do business in China are the latest group to warn that the economy there has become troubled. The American Chamber of Commerce in the People’s Republic of China, or AmCham China,…
The Ifo Business Climate Index for trade and industry in Germany rose again in March. The index reached 109.8, rising from 109.7 in February. Germany joins the U.S., China and, to a lesser extent, Japan…
It does not matter whether gasoline prices are measured by AAA Fuel Gauge or the carefully watched Lundberg Survey, the trend is clear. The average price for regular gasoline increased 11.49 cents to $3.9297 a…
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) struggles with its Windows Mobile OS as app developers have been slow to adopt it. (Reuters) Smugglers find it more difficult to make money on Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) products in China…