Friday morning saw the release of June’s employment report from the BLS. Wall St officially expected 110K new private payroll jobs created and a 200K loss in US Census workers, for a total net 90K total jobs lost in June..
The BLS report was (even) weaker :

 +83K new private payroll jobs created (lower than the 110K expected) 
-225K [...]

I have been working from the premise that once the federal government stimulus is removed, and once 2011 tax increases kick in, that our economy will enter the second leg of a recession -the double dip. In a broad sense, I arrive at this conclusion because I maintain that the pain of unwinding a quarter [...]

I won’t get into the gory details of economics, lest you skip reading these newsletters altogether. But consider please, the possibility that Keynes was wrong.
There are several widely followed schools of thought / philosophies in the field of economics (called the dismal science was good reason).  John Maynard Keynes is arguably the best known economist and [...]

As you know, the first Friday of every month has the release of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report on the previous month’s employment information. 
Expectations were running very high. Stock markets have priced-in 3.5% GDP growth and a future of non-stop 300,000 new jobs per month as far as the eye can see. Recall that the US economy generates [...]

Probably the most significant financial news was when the German financial system regulators spooked stock, bond, commodity, and forex markets this week. They announced a ban on naked short selling of stocks and bonds of Germany’s 10 largest banks, German sovereign bonds – called Bunds, and credit default swaps on Bunds. 

Short selling is where you borrow a [...]

Abbey Joseph Cohen is a Sr analyst at Goldman Sachs. She is trotted -out from time to time to be head cheerleader and hype things up.  On Thursday, CNBC TV interviewed Abbey. She had the impossible job of trying to convince viewers that despite the fact that she sees the US economy slowing in the 2nd half of the year, she [...]

On top of the $145B Greek emergency loan package, we now have another loan package worth 750B euro or roughly $970B to help stave-off a default from any of the PIIGS: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. 
 
Here’s how it breaks out:

The 15 eurozone countries (those countries that use the euro as their currency) other than [...]

The 1st quarter advance GDP report was released. Estimates were for 3.4% growth, but we saw 3.2% reported. 3.2% GDP growth is very respectable and likely one of the highest growth rates we’ll see in the next several years.
 
The report’s good news is consumers increased spending and helped propel economic growth last quarter. The bad [...]

US Housing saw an increase in sales activity in April -as expected — since April lies in the peak of the annual housing sales cycle. Plus this April 30th marked the deadline for home purchasers to benefit from the extended home buyers credit.  Housing remains one of the core impediments to US economic growth. Given [...]

Friday saw the release of the April employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Results were that we saw an increase of 290,000 jobs in April. This was the strongest rate of hiring in 4 years. So why didn’t the stock market rise on the good news?
 
I’ll leave aside the concerns over European [...]