At today’s news conference following a meeting of the interest rate setting FOMC, Chairwoman Yellen was clear about three things. Rates will start rising later this year (my bet remains 9/17/15), rates will rise by one percentage point every 12…
With Anthem trying to buy CIGNA, UnitedHealth wanting to takeover Aetna, while Aetna looks to buy Humana, frenzied healthcare consolidation has arrived. Insures are bulking up to battle increasingly large hospital chains who want to renegotiate discounts to offset lower…
Today is the 800-year anniversary of the Magna Carta. It is a document which inspired the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and other than English, is Great Britain’s greatest export. The Magna Carta didn’t create democracy,…
The Friday File: The lowest grossing movie in history is Zyzzyz Road, which grossed a total of $30, followed closely by Storage 24, which grossed $72. The biggest box office bomb ever: 47 Ronin, which lost a cool $150 million…
Residential construction employment rose by 8,500 in May and by 149,000 over the past year. The steepest annual wage growth among construction workers was for heavy and civil engineering construction at 5.1%, next came residential building at 4.8%. Moreover, the…
May’s seasonally adjusted annual sales rate of 17.8 million vehicles, the best since 7/05, was terrific! Moreover, the average sales price was $33,363 a rise of 4.3% since 5/14. Fewer fleet sales helped, but low gas prices caused elevated truck…
After reaching a high of 121.9 million in November 2007, the ranks of the full-time employed plummeted to a cyclical low of 111.0 million in October 2009, a loss of 10.7 million jobs. Today, the number of full-time workers is…
May’s employment data was excellent! Payrolls rose by 280,000, upward revisions were made to prior months, and because the labor force participation rate grew 0.1% for the second month in a row, the unemployment rate increase from 5.4% to 5.5%…
The Friday File: While American Pharoah is a 3-5 favorite to win the Belmont Stakes and in the process be the first winner of the Triple Crown since 1978, he has a tough road. The Belmont is the longest race…
Despite being about to begin the seventh year of an economic recovery, GDP growth has averaged a lackluster 2.2% the entire time, profoundly lower than in previous recoveries. The reason, a combination of slow labor force growth, primarily due to…