Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is testifying in front of Congress again this Wednesday in a “Day-Two” of what was formerly known as the Humphrey-Hawkins Testimony. Bernanke’s prepared remarks today are, as they usually…
A new report from the State Budget Crisis Task Force received nearly universal coverage by the media. One reason is that the task force was led by legends Paul Volcker and Richard Ravitch. Another reason…
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is testifying and the market is looking for (and hoping for) any signs of life for more easing measures. While Bernanke did not promise any additional quantitative easing measures immediately,…
Business inventories for the month of May were up 0.3%, while inventory sales were 0.1% lower in May. The report from the Commerce Department does have a rather large lag — this is a…
Moody’s issued its cleverly titled “Summer of Discontent” analysis of the global economic situation. The comments about the next quarter were dire, but, as usually, the rating agency was late in its evaluation and…
The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee has just released the minutes from its June FOMC Meeting and investors are going to take the news as a disappointment if they were hoping for more quantitative…
An extraordinary number of actions have been taken recently that show a rising belief the global economy is in trouble. First among these are the rate actions taken by the European Central Bank, Bank of England…
In a very modest sign that unemployment has not risen sharply, employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that Planned layoffs fell to a 13-month low in June, as U.S.-based employers announced job cuts…
Is a U.S. recession on the way? If the Institute for Supply Management’s Report on Business in manufacturing is any key, we are very close. The PMI (purchasing managers index) came in at 49.7%,…
nationsonline.org“What is at stake is not only the economic integration, it is also the overall economic confidence in the euro area, and indeed, our commitment to the European project,” said European Commission president Jose…
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has released its report for manufacturing activity in the month of June. Some regions are seeing continued slowing growth, but the Dallas Fed district went up back into…
The number of jobs the economy has added in each of the past four months has been weaker than expected. May unemployment numbers show that only 69,000 jobs were added. The national unemployment rate…
The federal government’s monthly unemployment numbers are gospel, at least to the financial markets. But they are revised at least once, often twice, after they are issued. An early signal of what the federal…
There has been a significant slowing of growth measured in the June Empire State Manufacturing Survey which now shows that manufacturing hardly expanded in the month. With so many weak economic releases of late…
The OECD has released a new report on retirement and pensions that conclude that governments can in fact raise retirement ages gradually as life expectancy rises in order to ensure that national pension plans…