The ECB faces the Devil’s Alternative that Frederick Forsyth mentioned in one of his books. All options are potentially riskly. Mario Draghi knows that maintaining the so-called stimuli involves more risks than benefits, but also knows that eliminating them could make the eurozone deck of cards collapse. Despite the massive injection of liquidity, he knows that he can […]

Despite the worse than expected non-farm payroll report last week, the U.S. labor market continued to absorb more workers. Although, the number of people filing for unemployment benefits surged by 10,000 to 239,000 last week, according to the Labor Department report released on Thursday. Weekly benefits below 300,000 are considered a healthy labor market.     Accordingly, the less volatile […]

Last week, the S&P 500 closed higher for the eighth week in a row. That seems like an unusually long winning streak, and a quick look at history tells us that is unusual. But the more important question is whether two straight months of gains is a sign of exhaustion or strength. Fortunately, there’s good news here. […]

The Philly Fed’s Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti Business Conditions Index (hereafter the ADS index) is a fascinating but relatively little known real-time indicator of business conditions for the U.S. economy, not just the Third Federal Reserve District, which covers eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware. Thus it is comparable to the better-known Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index […]

Confirming reports from earlier this week that the Senate GOP tax plan would delay the corporate tax cut for (at least) one year, a move that would strip the proposed tax reform of its most potent benefit, moments ago the Wapo reported that in a few hours, Senate Republicans will propose delaying a cut in the corporate tax […]