United States

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.…

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…

Politicians in Washington D.c. have cooked up a nice way to re-create the mistakes of the Great Depression by attaching a 'Buy American' provision onto the stimulus bill making its way through Congress. Apparently the Canadians and…

You heard the quotes (China slams U.S. profligacy). Here's the video. After some brief introductory remarks Chinese Premier Wen gets down to ripping into the United States. If you want to get right to his most quotable remarks, they begin…

Seasonal adjustments for jobless claims are wearing off, but the uptick in claims remains. U.S. Jobless claims for the week ended January 24th came in at 588,000, up slightly from the previous week. Meanwhile, continuing claims reached a…

Smarting from Tim Geithner's comments about China manipulating, its currency, the Chinese have retaliated with a condemnation of U.S. economic policy in the harshest of terms. At the World Economic Forum, Chinese Premier Wen went on the…

I have yet to read what the media has reported on the new Case-Shiller Housing Index numbers for November 2008. However, I have crunched the numbers and they do not look very good. For the Composite-20 list of cities, the index is down…

When the Bush Administration gave banks money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), it was not a complete freebie. The government has received preferred shares in many institutions. This shares pay dividends to the government…

This past week, jobless claims settled in at a level near 600,000 after a few weeks of decline due largely to seasonal adjustments. Jobless claims were 589,000 while continuing claims were 4,607,000.