Fans of economic policy are used to the old “night is day,” “down is up,” approach to economic policy. After all, much of the media are worried about robots taking all the jobs even as the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that productivity growth (the rate at which robots are taking jobs) […]

ADP’s stronger-than-expected gain in US private employment for August hints at the possibility that the downshift in the labor market’s annual growth rate over the past two years is steadying. If so, we may see some corroboration in tomorrow’s update on payrolls from the Labor Dept. Meantime, the ADP Employment Report for this month is certainly encouraging. […]

Wells Fargo analyst Stephen East last night upgraded Owens Corning (OC) to Outperform from Market Perform with an $83 price target. The glass fiber maker closed yesterday up $1.57 to $71.76. The analyst sees an “inexpensive valuation” versus peers and has increased comfort in Owens’ ability to achieve or surpass this year’s targets while generating […]

Asian indexes were mixed in early Thursday trade after Chinese manufacturing and services PMIs showed positive signs. China’s official manufacturing PMI rose to 51.7 in August, surpassing the forecast for 51.3, while the country’s official services PMI dropped to 53.4 this month, compared with 54.5 in July. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index was up 0.80 percent […]

In May, Canada’s GDP report showed that the economy expanded 0.6% on a month over month basis. This marked a seventh consecutive month of increase in economic activity. On a year over year basis, Canada’s GDP expanded 2.6% during the first quarter of 2017. This was also the fourth consecutive quarterly expansion in the GDP. […]