There Is A Wide Disparity

April employment rose 115,000, with the unemployment rate down to 8.1 percent, driven by a drop in the labor force participation rate. With subpar job gains, structural issues further complicate the outlook. Employment Growth: Subpar Consistent with Moderate Growth Employment was up 115,000 in April, with gains in many sectors, e.g., manufacturing, education and health and business services, as illustrated in the top graph. Weakness in construction and government did contribute to the smaller-than-expected gain, but the payback for favorable seasonal adjustment factors earlier this year appears to have affected the data. Over the past three months, the average gain in jobs has been 176,000, with private sector jobs averaging 183,000. Manufacturing gains over the past three months have ...

(Reuters) - Gold edged up on Tuesday in holiday-thinned trade on the back of a weaker dollar but remained in a tight range as investors awaited cues on the outlook of the U.S. economy and potential policy moves in the world's largest economy. Investors are looking for clues on policy direction from the minutes of the last U.S. Federal Reserve policy meeting, due on Tuesday, although Fed officials on Monday signaled little appetite for further monetary steps to stimulate U.S. growth in an economy that is gradually strengthening. U.S. factory orders due later in the day, as well as a key U.S. employment market report scheduled for release later in the week, are expected to provide some indication on the well-being of the U.S. economy and the necessity for further monetary easing. ...

Weekly Economic and Financial Commentary : 02/12/2011 U.S. Review Moderate Improvement in Economic Data The November employment report showed a big drop in the unemployment rate. However, the overall pace of job growth remains constrained. Housing market data this week indicated that new home sales rose modestly in October, while home prices continued their downward trajectory. The latest read on manufacturing sentiment from the ISM-manufacturing survey indicated that output continued to expand at a moderate pace despite the ongoing European debt crisis. Data Supports Stronger Growth in Q4 This week's data continued to reinforce our view for stronger fourth-quarter economic growth. The housing market data showed sales and new home construction have bottomed, while the ISM- ...

(Reuters) - Brent crude dipped on Thursday in Asian trade after five straight days of gains, slipping below $122 a barrel on concern that rising prices will hurt demand from the United States and China, the world's two largest oil consumers. Unrest in the oil exporting region in North Africa and the Middle East continues to support prices. Brent crude fell 52 cents to $121.78 a barrel at 0421 GMT after rising to a 2-1/2-year high above $123 on Wednesday. U.S. crude futures declined 45 cents to $108.38 a barrel, after touching $109.15 on Wednesday, the highest since September 2008. High crude prices are pushing up retail fuel prices worldwide, adding to the inflationary pressure governments already face from the rising cost of food and raw materials. "Current price levels should have a ...

To the barricades! Today, we continue to explore our new idea. Alert readers have already figured out that it is not a completely new idea. The ancient Greeks toyed with it too. Really new ideas are extremely rare. In our modern version, it might be called the General Theory of Decadence…or the Cycles of Growth and Decline, or more playfully, the Unified Zombie Theory. Life goes on. Material progress accumulates. The story of human life on earth grows longer, and more interesting. We see no end to it. But each component part comes to an end. Each life, each economy, each company, each society and each civilization still shrivels, corrodes, and exterminates itself. The past must become history so that the future may become the present. It takes many downsides to make upside progress. ...

If you’re interested in making money in energy commodities over the coming decade, I have two important numbers for you… The first is the price of natural gas in the US – which is less than $4.50 per million British thermal units (mBtu). The second is the price of natural gas in Asia, where people will pay $10 per mBtu for natural gas they import from overseas. This is a disparity someone can make a lot of money on. The only reason it exists at all is that the natural gas market is mainly a local market. It is not as easy to ship natural gas across the seas as it is to ship oil. You have to supercool it so it liquefies. Then you can put it on a tanker and ship it to a terminal where your buyer can re-gasify it. This is the liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade. There are problems. US energy ...

The Week Ahead Highlights * Stress test results are in--Yawn * Sterling bolstered as some of the economic gloom lifts * German recovery becoming difficult to ignore * JPY-strength becoming an issue in Tokyo * Key data and events to watch next week Stress test results are in--Yawn The long-awaited results of the Eurozone banking sector stress tests were delivered on Friday and markets greeted them with a collective yawn. Earlier leaks led markets to conclude the adverse scenarios would not be especially stringent, causing most to discount the results. To re-cap, only 7 of the 91 banks tested failed, requiring a total of only EUR 3.5 bio to be raised in new capital. To put that number in perspective, some analysts reckon Spanish banks alone need to raise EUR 40 bio to ...