United States

Initial jobless claims for the U.S. came out today for the week ended March 7th and the number was 654,000, up from an upwardly revised 645,000. This puts the widely quoted 4-week average at 650,000, a business cycle high. All numbers…

This is the most important  employment number in recent memory. Consensus estimates were for 650,000 with a wide range from 500,000 to 800,000.   Everyone is looking to this number to determine where we are headed. There was a…

Initial jobless claims came in at 639,000, down significantly from 670,000 the week before. This is one positive in a sea of bad news regarding the employment market. It does not mean that tomorrow's unemployment number will be good. Expect…

The widely followed ADP Employer Services jobs report shows that 697,000 jobs were lost last month, suggesting a very large unemployment number when the government data is released on Friday. I have indicated in the past that seasonal…

Marshall Auerback here. As Ed lucidly suggested to me by e-mail: "We see the Fed giving a loan for assets at the price as reported on the institutions' books. Otherwise, you have to take a write-down just to get the loan. That's a…

This comes from S&P's website (pdf): Data through December 2008, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show that the prices of existing single…

UPDATE: This is another re-post given the huge bailout just administered to AIG. I am coming out in favor of nationalization in the United States. The efforts to fix the banking system to date have failed. As a result, America is still…

The jobs picture is looking grim. Jobless claims for the week ending 14 Feb 2009 were 627,000, pushing the average to 619,000. Additionally, nearly 5 million people are staying on the unemployment roles, the highest figure ever. But, it…

If you recall, a few months ago there was a lot of speculation in Washington about Paul Volcker being named a 'car czar' to deal with the problem with the Big Three automakers. That idea has fallen by the wayside. President Obama has named…

A recent note from Time Magazine's blog, Swampland: This looks real bad, both for Roland Burris and his country. First a quick recap: Burris gets appointed to the Senate by Rod Blagojevich, a self-made cartoon of political ineptness and…