ThinkstockAfter the Labor Department stunned the market with much stronger payrolls data, the market is going to get to deal with a new reading on consumer sentiment. The Reuters/University of Michigan reading did not…
ThinkstockStandard & Poor’s Ratings Services has downgraded its sovereign credit ratings of France. The move was pushed out in the middle of the night in America, which is the morning hours in Europe. It…
ThinkstockLong live the trends of central bank easing! The European Central Bank (ECB) just delivered on what was being hoped for, and that is a formal interest rate cut. The ECB lowered the refinance…
ThinkstockAhead of a key meeting of the Communist Party, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has stated that the nation’s economy must create 10 million jobs per year, and sustained growth of at least 7.2% will…
ThinkstockSpain’s Ministry of Employment and Social Security reported that in October its economy lost 87,028 jobs and the total number of unemployed in the southern European nation rose to 4,811,383. Summer is over, and…
ThinkstockIn an interview with CNBC Monday morning, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said that “cumulative progress” in addressing the U.S. unemployment rate has been good under the Fed’s quantitative easing (QE) program. He…
ThinkstockThe U.S. Federal Reserve may have slashed the Fed funds rate as low as humanly possible. After all, how can you beat zero percent (actually targeted 0.00% to 0.25%)? The answer is with quantitative…
The American middle class is shrinking. According to a report released earlier this year, an estimated 51% of the population was in the middle class at the start of the decade, down from 61%…
ThinkstockTwo different manufacturing reports hit the tape this morning. The more important and broader measurement from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) report on business covered the manufacturing sector for October. This reading came…
Right before 9:00 a.m. EST on Friday we saw that the Markit Purchasing Managers Index for October fell to 51.8 from 52.8 in September. The good news is that the number was better than…
Courtesy J.C. Penney Co. Inc.; photo by Chris RupertOctober was a very strange month for business and government alike. The federal government shutdown ground down many operations to a stall or outright closure. It…
ThinkstockRetail sales in Germany were weaker than expected in September, according to data from the federal statistics office released Thursday. Retail sales fell 0.4% from August, to their lowest level since March. Economists had expected…
courtesy U.S. Federal ReserveSaying that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) it sees improvement in U.S. economic activity and in the U.S. labor market since beginning its $85 billion asset purchase program, the committee…
ThinkstockThe latest economic reading is the Conference Board’s report on monthly consumer confidence for October. The title of the report was “Consumer Confidence Decreases Sharply in October,” but this easily could have been “A Total…
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Janet Yellen, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton and served as a former head of the San Francisco Fed, was recently chosen by President Obama to…