Reading this morning’s latest weekly update on jobless claims inspires the question: When will we see evidence that a new recession is here, or lurking in the near future? The answer: Not today. If there’s a clear sign that the economy’s set to tumble, it’s not obvious in last week’s new applications for unemployment benefits. In fact, this leading indicator continues to tell us that the labor market is slowly improving. New claims dropped by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 367,000 last week. One number doesn’t tell us much, of course, but it’s hard to dismiss the trend.
Daily Archives: February 2, 2012
Gold Tricks In A New Bottle
Brett Arends of MarketWatch delivers a gentle profile of James Grant and his long-standing support for a return to the gold standard. Grant, who pens the newsletter Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, is among the metal’s leading promoters. He’s even been cited as a possible candidate to run the Federal Reserve. In that unlikely outcome, we certainly know how Grant would act. Arends quotes Grant as saying that the dollar’s value should be stable and unchanging, with the not-so-subtle implication that future crises would be averted with this policy.