ThinkstockThe National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Tuesday morning reported that its small business optimism index for May rose 1.4 points from 95.2 in April to come in at 96.6. The May reading is…
ThinkstockJames Bullard, President of St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, spoke on Monday in front of a group at the Tennessee Bankers Association Annual Meeting. The speech was titled “How Far Is the FOMC From…
ThinkstockGraduate from college with a major in business or computer science and the odds are strong there will be a job waiting. Graduate with a degree in fine arts or graphic design and begin…
ThinkstockStandard & Poor’s has affirmed its AA+ rating on the United States of America for its sovereign credit. On top of that, its outlook remains Stable. S&P said that U.S. strengths include its diversified…
Ed Brown, via Wikimedia CommonsThe U.S. Labor Department issued its Employment Situation Report for the month of May on Friday morning. Frankly, it is making the ADP report look a bit silly. Still, the…
ThinkStockThe standard of living in the United States reached its highest level since 2008, just before the recession caught hold, and the year that Gallup began to collect and report on the data. According…
The U.S. Labor Department has released its final set of data prior to Friday’s key unemployment rate and payrolls figures. Unfortunately, it is a bit weak. Weekly jobless claims rose by 8,000 in the…
ThinkstockThe European Central Bank (ECB) has now done something most of have never seen before. It has adopted its own quantitative easing method by adopting at least a partial negative rate environment. Mario Draghi…
ThinkstockThe Federal Reserve has issued its latest Beige Book, summarizing the comments received from businesses and other contacts outside the Federal Reserve. While investors flock to this as Fed outlooks, the Fed does note…
ThinkstockIf you have watched the stock market, bond market and the economy in general for the past five years or so, it will be no surprise that the world’s economies and financial markets are…
ThinkstockThe ISM Non-Manufacturing Index rose to 56.3 in May from 55.2 in April. The gain might not look like that much, but investors and economic watchers need to consider that this was actually the…
ThinkstockEvery month traders await the new payrolls and unemployment report from the U.S. Labor Department. This is generally the most widely anticipated number of all economic reports. So, preliminary non-government reports such as ADP…
ThinkstockThe so-called U.S. trade balance, what the rest of us have referred to for years as the trade deficit, came in at a much worse reading than expected for the month of April: -$47.2…
ThinkstockADP’s report on private sector payroll growth in May may have just dashed some of the expectations for Friday’s key unemployment and payrolls report. ADP reported that private sector employment increased by only 179,000…
courtesy of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.The 500 largest corporations in the United States posted profits of more than $1 trillion last year, the first time ever to reach that level and, of course, a new…