Author Archives: mkevane

The Labor Department reported Friday that employers added 321,000 jobs in November — a much stronger number than expected — but perhaps even more significant was the biggest gain in average hourly earnings since June 2013. Hourly earnings rose by … Continue reading →

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Look at the FRED graph of inflation.  U.S. has only had inflation lower than 2% basically once (early 1960s) in last 50 years.  The economy has done pretty well in that whole time period.  So why mess with success?  I … Continue reading →

Stockton, California, won court approval of its plan to exit bankruptcy by paying bond investors pennies on the dollar while shielding public pensions, in a case watched by other cities facing heavy retiree costs.“This plan, I’m persuaded, is the best … Continue reading →

The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury … Continue reading →

The U.S. economy finally seems to be climbing out of the deep hole it entered during the global financial crisis. Unfortunately, Europe, the other epicenter of crisis, can’t say the same. Unemployment in the euro area is stalled at almost … Continue reading →

The Federal Reserve awarded $334.714 billion 213 billion pounds of eight-day term deposits to banks, a record amount, at a test auction held on Monday, it said in a statement on Tuesday.  The U.S. central bank allotted them to 90 … Continue reading →

Will David Carr tell his readers how much money he made for his puff piece on Bill Cosby, and give that to a good charity? I was one of those who looked away. Having read the Philadelphia magazine story when … Continue reading →

What do I mean by saying that everything changes [at the so-called zero lower bound]? As I wrote way back when, in a rock-bottom economy “the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky … Continue reading →

Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank president, strongly signaled on Friday that he and his colleagues were preparing a new round of powerful monetary stimulus to jolt the flagging eurozone economy at a time when the risk of deflation is … Continue reading →

A report released this week by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that banks had built up enormous holdings of commodities and infrastructure that allowed the banks to monitor and influence the price of these materials.One potential danger for … Continue reading →

China’s central bank on Friday announced a surprise cut to interest rates, in the clearest sign yet that policy makers are growing increasingly concerned the country’s economic slowdown.Despite numerous signs that growth has been flagging, China’s leadership for months has … Continue reading →