United States

No one story sticks out for me today. So I thought I would make a few comments on the stories making the rounds today in the Internet. Let’s start in the U.S.

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 European situation is still flirting with recession, if we look at the latest PMI data. I think the drop in oil prices will give the Europeans an unmitigated boost but the longer-term situation is still dire given the policy framework…

Tim Duy wrote a post on his blog on Sunday about his optimism about the US economy that got me thinking and I want to use it as a launching pad for a discussion about baseline economic scenarios. My baseline is positive, optimistic if you…

With Black Friday behind us, it’s a pretty good time to do a check of market currents and what they mean. And despite my generally optimistic view of the US near-term economic landscape, a lot of what I am seeing now points to continued…

The latest batch of data points coming out of the global economy are a mixed bag. Some point to continued robust retail sales in the U.S. but other points show weakness in expected capital expenditure and hiring globally, while others show…

Right now, the global economy is slowing, with problems in Japan, China, Europe and the Emerging Markets. Only North American growth has remained strong as 2015 approaches. The dip in oil prices changes all of that. While a further fall…

Today, I want to highlight some of the best stories in the news today. US economy Let’s start off with the US, where the hiring of holiday workers is said to track very well with retail sales. In the lead up to the holidays, the…

Gavyn Davies has a column up over at the Financial Times, which I think is a masterpiece at integrating a number of threads from different economic schools of thought into a composite picture of the global economy that makes sense. His view…

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…