Supremes strike down Trump tariffs–more chaos ahead
The U.S. supreme court today declared many of President Donald Trump’s tariffs illegal. In a 6-3 ruling, the court said that a 1977 law designed to address national emergencies did not provide the legal justification for most of the Trump administration’s tariffs on...
For consumers in the lower half of the income scale, the recession has already arrived
Lower income consumers are getting squeezed and it’s likely to get worse. Working-class Americans are facing slowing wage growth and rising housing and electricity bills. And they’re about to feel more pressure from tariffs and from higher healthcare costs as a result...
New claims for unemployment tick up again this week
For the third time in six weeks, initial claims for unemployment in regular state programs rose. The number of new claims grew to 419,000 from 368,000, according to data from the Department of Labor. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a slight drop to...
Initial claims for unemployment soar (NOT) by 2,000
Initial claims for unemployment in regular state programs rose by 2,000 to 373,000 for the week ended July 3, the Labor Department reported today. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg were looking for initial claims to drop to 350,000. Now this may be disappointing to...
Initial claims for unemployment fall by more than forecast for the week
New claims for unemployment dropped to 712,000 in regular state programs in the week ended March 6, the Labor Department reported today. That drop of 42,000 from the prior week was a bigger drop than economists had projected. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg were...Watch tomorrow's initial claims for unemployment number for signs that the economy is strong?/weaker? than expected
Time to torture the data! Wall Street will have the red-hot irons and the Spanish boots out in full force tomorrow morning trying to extract the last bit of information out of the initial claims for unemployment number that will be released at 8:30 a.m. ET. The hope...Nervous? Afraid to stay in but scared to get out? Join the club (and read my three strategies for coping)
Feeling twitchy? Your portfolio is probably full of stocks trading at 52-week highs. And I’ll bet you’ve thought about selling. And you would do that–except that the stock market keeps going up (well except for the last couple of days), cash pays close to...Capitalism could still get a stem to stern overhaul. To keep score in the Revolution track something economists call "externalities."
“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” said Stanford economist Paul Romer way back in 2007 near the start of the recent (or should that be “current”?) global fiscal and economic crisis. You certainly understand why if you take a look at U.S. economic history. Most...The economy will start adding jobs again–in April
Unemployment will start to decline and the economy will start to add jobs again in April 2010. At least that’s the result you get if you extrapolate the current rate of decrease in new jobless claims out into the future. The Financial Times did the calculation...Did the United States prosper because of or inspite of its leaders?
The great stock picker and mutual fund manager Peter Lynch once advised, “Buy businesses so simple even an idiot could run them. Because one day an idiot will.” After reading David S. Reynolds’s Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson (HarperCollins, 2008), I...Way down the road I can see early signs of the next stock market–and it's not going to look a lot like the last market or today's either
Sometimes the shortest distance to portfolio disaster is a straight line between two points. This, I believe, is one of those times. If I’ve been clear about nothing else in the last few weeks, I hope I’ve been clear on how impossible it is to find a reliable,...Huh? Wall Street figures higher unemployment is good news?
You’d think that last week’s jump in the August unemployment rate to 9.7%–the consensus among economists was for just 9.5%–would have sent stocks tumbling. After all, if more people are out of work, consumers will buy less. And it’s not exactly a vote of...GDP numbers show the recession crawling to an end but followed by a very slow and weak recovery
The government’s reports on quarterly GDP (gross domestic product) are the most detailed picture investors get of the state of the economy. The initial report for the second quarter shows an economy that’s still contracting but at a much slower pace than...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
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