Markets around the world fell yesterday on news of disappointing US job growth, with most indexes in the US and Europe sinking at least 1%. The median forecast by analysts was 203,000 new jobs in March according to Reuters, while actual results were 120,000. For comparison, the past three months have exceeded 200,000 new jobs. … Continue reading
Sorry for the late post, i’ve been incredibly sick the last two days. There have been more developments on the Greek front. http://www.reuters.com/resources_v2/flash/video_embed.swf?videoId=230006889&edition=BETAUS Protests are ravaging Greece right now, as the Greek Parliament is set to vote on an austerity package that would precede a bailout by the EU. Greece needs this in order to … Continue reading
In recent days, Ben Bernanke has gotten surprisingly political. In a Senate Budget Committee hearing, Bernanke stated that lawmakers must act fast and renew the Bush tax cuts. He argues that all the uncertainty will hold back markets and will keep businesses from making long term decisions, causing economic growth to stall. As he has … Continue reading
The 2012 election campaign has been under way for a while now, and I thought it would be worthwhile to write about it. This election very quickly became a battle over the economy, with the republicans trying to say that Obama’s doing a horrible job and Obama trying to prove them wrong. Mostly, the republicans … Continue reading
Today has seen some very interesting news about the state of the economy. In the last few days, news about new growth forecasts from the World Bank and IMF. To add to these announcements, US seasonally adjusted new home sales decreased by 2.2% nationwide, and more than 10% in some regions. Non-adjusted home sales fell … Continue reading
Once again, some good news and some bad news. The good news is that confidence in the economy among business leaders has risen. In a recent survey by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), business leaders were asked many questions regarding the economy. These included questions about GDP, unemployment, and more. The results were very … Continue reading
Adding more good news to yesterday’s good news, reports released today by the Department of Labor indicate that weekly initial unemployment claims have dropped to a four year low. The new figure, for the week of January 14th, is 352,000 claims, down 12.4% from the week before, and down 46.5% from the height of the … Continue reading
First, I should address something that seems like a contradiction to what I said earlier, but isn’t. A few days ago, in this post, I noted that unemployment had decreased over the last year. At first, this seems to contradict this news that seasonally adjusted initial unemployment claims (new claims for unemployment benefits) have risen recently. … Continue reading
Today, the Federal Reserve released figures for outstanding consumer credit in the month of November that offer some mixed signals for the economy. According to the Fed, outstanding consumer credit increased by $20.37 billion, the greatest increase since November 2001. Revolving credit accounted for over a quarter of that increase, and has increased for the … Continue reading
