Economy

While job losses of 598,000 in today's report for January 2009 were more than the 525,000 expected, it was within the expected range. Evidence of this comes from the increase in long-term treasury yields and stock futures prices immediately…

U.S. initial jobless claims soared to yet another 26-year high, registering 626,000 for the week ending January 31st. The continuing claims number was equally dreadful, hitting an all-time high of 4.79 million.

We are barely two weeks into Barack Obama's tenure and reports are surfacing everywhere that his "team of rivals" is at each other's throat. President Obama had said just after the election that he was looking to pull together the best and…

I do not think General Electric is AAA company -- far from it. Their finance arm GE Capital is at the center of the private equity and asset-backed security time bombs that have yet to explode. And this makes the cash flow expected from…

I just picked up two reports on California's desperate situation. California, whose legislature and Governor have been hold up in around the clock negotiations, is now issuing IOU's instead of cash. They have also been downgraded by Moody's…

The ISM Manufacturing Survey came out. The PMI index was 35.6, up from 32.4 in December. It was bad (50 is the tipping point between recession and growth), but it's not all bad. There were two industries with growth: textiles and petroleum.…

The statistics coming out of Japan have been truly awful of late. In my last post, you saw a small video connecting reduced spending in the U.S. to Japan. However, I need to be more explicit about how things are unraveling in Japan. The…

U.S. consumer spending contracted more than anticipated in December 2008, declining by 1.0%. However, this number is a look into the past and does little to help predict how spending will trend going forward.

Everyone should be concerned about the increasing tone of trade friction in the global economy. While Chinese Premier Wen and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown are setting a positive tone in London today regarding bilateral trade…

A survey in China has determined that job losses amongst migrant workers are three times worse than had been reported. In fact, 20 million workers in China have already lost employment.