Not surprisingly, May retail sales fall

Last month retail sales fell 1.2% according to the U.S. Commerce Department.  This compares to an expected increase of 0.2%. Analysis: While the press is questioning the strength of the economic recovery because of the fall in retail sales, I am not.  The month of May...

Number of job openings increasing rapidly

The Associated Press is reporting today that the number of job openings in the U.S. increased to 3.1 million in April, from 2.8 million in March.  The April level is the highest level since December 2008.  Most importantly, the increase of 300,000 job openings came...

Dollar appreciation

Not that it is a consolation to those of you who have followed my “buy now” advice of the last month, but the U.S. dollar is appreciating very strongly relative to the euro.  Recall that one of the reasons I was confident that U.S. stocks would do well...

Further positive EU reforms

Today European finance ministers agreed to critical economic reforms.  Among the reforms are the following: Eurostat, the European economic statistician, has been given the authority to audit the finances of EU member nations.  This has been done to mitigate against...