- The U.S. economy created 200,000 non-farm payroll jobs last month -- unemployment fell to 8.5%.
- Central bankers and regulators in the EU, U.S and Japan have agreed to face 'detailed' peer reviews over how well they are implementing new international bank capital rules.
- David Cameron suggested on Sunday that legislation to curb excessive executive pay, including giving shareholders new voting powers, could begin in the spring. The High Pay Commission conducted an inquiry that found that the pay of top executives at FTSE companies had risen by more than 4,000 per cent on average in the last 30 years.
- Brazil's inflation rose to 6.5% in 2011, up from 5.91% in 2010
- The unemployment rate in the Eurozone stayed at 10.3 % in November, unchanged from October.
- Canada's unemployment rate rose to 7.5% in December
- Swiss inflation rate fell to 0.2% in 2011.
- Insurance companies in China collected $226.4 billion of premiums last year, up 10.4% YoY
- David Cameron has said he would veto a European-wide financial transaction tax unless it was imposed globally, deepening a confrontation with France and Germany.
- The U.S. ISM rose in December to 52.6% from November's 52.0%, a reading that nonetheless was below the 53.3% expected.
- The DOE said in the week ended Dec. 30:
- Oil supplies rose 2.2 million barrels
- Gasoline inventories rose 2.5 million,
- Distillates supplies rose 3.2 million barrels.
- YoY BMW U.S. sales rose 17.9%
- It is hot in Australia and they’re running low on soft-drinks (The decade to 2011 was the hottest on record)
- The number of Americans claiming weekly unemployment benefits fell 15,000 to 372,000 last week, the lowest level since the summer of 2008.
- Spanish banks will need to find an extra €50bn to cover potential losses from property loans, the Financial Times reported
- "Trust me" is not enough of a safeguard, says Amnesty International, as Obama signs the NDAA into law.
- Hot, dry weather in South America continues to raise concerns about potential yield losses.
- US Manufacturing improves to 53.9 in December vs 52.7 in November.
- The Chinese purchasing managers index (PMI), rose to 50.3 in December from 49 in November, indicating a slight expansion in business activity in China's vast factory sector.
- New polling data from Lawrence Hamilton, of the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, suggests that the “anti-science” epithet really does apply to many U.S. Republicans—at least on environmental issues.
