Saturday, January 05, 2013

QUICK OVERVIEW

  • Friday's U.S. jobless rate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics remained unchanged from its revised level the previous month, adding 155,000 jobs, roughly equal to the average 153,000 jobs added monthly over the first 11 months of the year. "At December's growth rate the labor market will not fill in (the) gap until the end of 2021," said Heidi Shierholz, economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

  • The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities increased 4.3% from October 2011, the biggest 12-month advance since May 2010.

  • U.S. GDP expanded at a 3.1 % annual rate, the Commerce Department said. It was the fastest growth since late 2011.

  • Sales of existing houses increased 5.9 % to a 5.04 million annual rate, the most since November 2009, the National Association of Realtors reported.

  • The Pew Charitable Trusts reckons that nearly a third of Americans who, as teenagers in the 1970s, belonged to the middle class have slipped below it as adults.

  • The Fed is planning to continue suppressing interest rates so long as the unemployment rate remained above 6.5%. In addition, they will not relent in its focus on unemployment unless the medium-term outlook for inflation rises above 2.5%.

  • U.S. foreclosure starts fell 13% MoM and were down 28% YoY

  • Eurozone finance ministers agreed to cede power to a common bank supervisor in Frankfurt -- its first big step towards banking union.

  • The U.S. unemployment rate fell from 7.9 to 7.7 %. The figures suggest that the US economy has a little more momentum than previously thought.


  •  (Spiegel) The guns have been silent in Iraq for years, but in Basra and Fallujah the number of birth defects and cancer cases is on the rise. Locals believe that American uranium-tipped munitions are to blame.

  • All members of the U.N. Security Council, with the lone exception of the United States, have publicly condemned Israel's recent settlement expansion activities and called for them to end.

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