Unemployment

As the Federal Reserve prepares for its next open market committee meeting and statement, I want to take a look at what US data are saying about the US economy. The main focus here is going to be the underlying pace of the US economy and…

Bill Gross and David Rosenberg are two smart investors who represent the dichotomy in markets right now. Rosenberg doesn't see the Fed hiking rates until 2016, while Bill Gross points to June (link here). Which side of this debate you take…

In the last post at Credit Writedowns Pro on jobs, I promised to talk about currency issues but I didn't! here are two issues then: the increasing current account surplus in Germany and the strong dollar's effect on China. On Germany,…

Today, we got the latest jobs report from the US. And the data were mostly good, with non-farm payrolls expanding by 295,000 and the unemployment rate falling to 5.5%. The big takeaway from the jobs report was not that job growth is so…

Continuing where I left off last week, I am going to emphasize here that the Federal Reserve is likely to raise US interest rates unless the US economy slows materially. Meanwhile, the economic and market fundamentals are moving in the…

On Friday, the US jobs data showed that the US real economy is weathering the oil price decline very well as oil sector jobs account for little in the overall economy. Despite the capital expenditure effect on future growth, the US economy…

Two topics are dominating the news of late: the decline in energy prices and the upheaval in Greek sovereign debt due to the upcoming general election. On the first issue, I have been generally positive about the economic impact because…

This morning, the US Labor Department reported a very bullish 321,000 increase in non-farm payrolls in November, well above expectations. Importantly, average hourly earnings showed the biggest gain since June 2013. And hours worked…

The big news this morning is the US employment report. The headline numbers were all good, though the add to non-farm payrolls came in below expectations. While this was a good report, the wage-related data were disappointing. Some thoughts…

The US mid-term elections have just ended as a major victory for the Republican Party. And while I don’t do politics, being in DC affords me a front row seat to what’s going on. Below is my take on what happened, why and what it means for…