ThinkstockTaxes are necessary for a functioning government, but according to one group, many states are crippling regional business growth with tax structures that are too expensive or complex. The Tax Foundation’s 2014 State Business…
ThinkstockThe Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary consumer sentiment index for October dropped to 75.2 from a final reading of 77.5 in August. The October index is the lowest reading since January. Economists were expecting…
ThinkstockYi Gang, the deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, recently said that the world’s second largest economy has recovered from a nasty period in the first half of 2013. The Chinese miracle…
Ed Brown, via Wikimedia CommonsNew claims for unemployment benefits jumped 66,000 in the week ending last Saturday, according to the weekly report from the U.S. Department of Labor. The total rose to 374,000 from…
Thinkstock A $24 Billion Standoff — October 17, 2013 Wednesday night, Congress approved and the president signed a bill that reopens the federal government and extends the U.S. borrowing authority. As we noted in yesterday’s…
ThinkstockThe Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is the federal agency responsible both for regulating the commodities markets and publishing weekly data on the state of those markets. The weekly Commitment of Traders report which…
ThinkstockThe impacts of the federal government are spread unevenly throughout the 50 states and the District of Columbia. States like Virginia with a lot of federal employees are among the hardest hit on that…
ThinkstockWith the federal government shutdown in the United States, there is much more focus on international monetary agencies and non-governmental economic reports. The calls from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) often may fall on…
Americans’ confidence in the economy last week fell the most since the week of September 15, 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and set off the global economic crisis. The Gallup economic confidence index plunged…
ThinkstockThe National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Tuesday morning reported that its small business optimism index for September came in at 93.9, down slightly from August’s revised reading of 94.1. In May the index…
ThinkstockThe world’s older population is growing. According to a report released last week, 11% of the current world population is 60 and older. By 2050, more than one in five will be at least…
ThinkstockAfter posting a five-year high in July, consumer spending pulled back in September, according to the latest Gallup self-reporting survey on Americans’ spending habits. The August daily average of $95 fell to $84 in…
ThinkstockU.S. Appellate Court Judge Richard Posner weighs in Monday morning with a blog post on the approaching crisis over raising the federal debt ceiling. Posner, long associated with conservative and neo-conservative economic positions, has…
ThinkstockIt likely was inevitable that the white-hot growth of Asian economies would slow, if only because of the recession-like conditions around the rest of the world. Now, that is happening, and these nations are…
The stock and bond markets in the United States and internationally had to trade through a very unusual first Friday or the month because there was no Labor Department report on Unemployment and on…