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…
ThinkstockInflation is just not appearing in the broad economic numbers. A fresh report from the U.S. Department of Labor actually is not that fresh, but it is the most recent report on inflation because…
ThinkstockThe October 29 to 30 Federal Open Market Committee policy meeting is one which may be a bit of a paradox, or at least one full of irony. It is easy to assume that…
fotopediaThe declining number of marriages gets criticized as a lack of commitment between people, or a challenge to the moral belief that people should not simply live together. Economists argue that marriage also tends…
ThinkstockThe Reuters/University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment for the end of October is a revised report, but this came in at 73.2. What is interesting is that the preliminary report was higher at 75.2, and…