Market Overview

The central banks of the world have now aligned. The Bank of England has launched a "forward guidance" approach and committed itself to very low short-term interest rates for an extended period of...

I’ve taken some criticism — particularly from advocates of modern monetary theory and sectoral balances and all that — for using total debt rather than just private debt in my work....

Paul Krugman says that we may have reached a “depressed equilibrium” that unemployment may remain elevated for a long, long time to come: We had what felt like an epic intellectual debate...

It’s a long-standing practice of this column to write shortened holiday editions of MarketWeek for the major holidays, and so this week will have a commentary shorter than usual. However, I can...

The Fed Funds futures curve steepened again on Friday, bringing forward the implied date of the first rate hike by the Fed.The date is now closer to October of 2014 as opposed to May of 2015 discussed...

If you have ever gone to get your driver’s license at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)…you may still be waiting in line. It’s a painful but often mandatory process, and in...

Asset returns were all over the map in the first half of 2013. Stocks outperformed bonds. But within equities, developed markets pummelled emerging markets, with the U.S. and Japan leading the way. A...

Friday’s payrolls report for June looked quite good—for several reasons. First, the private sector created a net 202,000 jobs last month, well above expectations. Second, payrolls...

On the surface, today’s jobs market report looks good.195,000 jobs were created in the U.S. economy during the month of June, with the “official” unemployment rate for the month...

The U.S. labor market continued to strengthen in June, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Strong June data and upward revisions for April and May put payroll job gains...

Friday's release of the non-farm payroll report noted one troubling aspect of this recovery following the recession that ending mid year 2009. The job market strength during this recovery seems more...

Are the central banks of the world starting to lose control of the financial markets? Could we be facing a situation where the bond bubble is going to inevitably implode no matter what the central...

Broke nations are bailing out other broke nations with borrowed money. Round and round we go - where we stop nobody knows. As of April, 41 different countries had active financial "arrangements" with...

Here is a look at two key numbers in the July monthly employment report for June:Average Hourly EarningsAverage Weekly HoursThe government has been tracking the data for Production and Nonsupervisory...