US economy

“Supervision, oversight and monitoring of our own banking systems. Standing ready to provide backstop liquidity if necessary,” -Ben Bernanke's depiction of the tools of the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), as stated in his Joint economic committee speech to congress on the state of the...

All attempts to reform the Status Quo of advanced finance-based Capitalism will fail, as its historically inevitable crisis is finally at hand. It is self-evident that conventional economics has failed, completely, utterly and totally. The two competing cargo cults of tax cuts/trickle-down and...

Given the flurry of depressing financial headlines recently, many Americans are not without good reasons to feel down in the dumps about the economy and the nation in general. The recent US debt ceiling debate only seemed to accentuate many of the frustrations that Americans have to deal with on a...

If you want to know when a recovery is coming, keep your eyes on the big banks (XLF) over the next few months. The market is looking for leadership and the banking sector needs to provide it. Banks led us into this economic downfall and banks need to lead us out. Banks are a great barometer of how...

It turns out the US economy is finally growing. The US economy added 162,000 jobs for the month of March. This is the highest number of jobs added in the United States in 3 years. The most encouraging sign is that the private sector added 123,000 jobs. The unemployment rate is holding steady at 9.7...

US housing starts hit their highest in six months in January, while industrial output jumped 0.9%, signaling that the economic recovery was taking a firm hold. According to the Commerce Department, groundbreaking activity for new homes rose 2.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000 units...

The US service sectors returned to growth territory, according to a survey of companies released yesterday by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). The ISM non-manufacturing index climbed to 50.5% in January from 49.8% in December. Despite growth last month, the market was disappointing as the...

The US economy grew at 5.7% in the fourth quarter - the fastest pace in more than six years. The growth was driven by a less aggressive reduction in inventories by businesses, according to the Commerce Department. Nigel Gault, Chief US Economist from IHS Global Insight, said that businesses and the...

Sales of previously-owned US homes plunged more than anticipated in December, the month after a government tax credit was originally due to expire. Purchases fell by a record 17% to a 5.45 million annual rate from 6.54 million in November, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR)....

According to the Labor Department, US consumer prices in November moved up 0.4%, with a spurt in energy prices. However, not accounting for food and energy prices, consumer prices remained flat in November. This compares to a 1.8% rise in the consumer price index and 1.7% growth in the core CPI a...