Adam Smith earned his title as the father of economics and free market capitalism with his 1776 work, commonly refered to in abbreviated form as The Wealth of Nations. Smith suggested that self interest in the form of an "invisible hand" would suffice to keep capitalism on solid footing. From this simple idea, economics would eventually branch into numerous warring schools of thought: 1) Classical School, 2) Neoclassical, 3) Keynesian, 4) Post Keynesian, 4) New Keynesian, 5) Monetarists, 6) New Classical, 7) Neo-Ricardian, 8) Marxists, 8) Austrian, and so on.
The U.S. Air Force has a motto: "Second to None". It's a shame that the U.S. economy can't make the same claim. After already over-taking Japan has the world's 2nd largest economy, the Chinese economy has just passed the U.S.’s to become the largest economy in the world.
ADP's proprietary private payrolls jobs report shows yet another solid month of strong private sector job gains. For November, ADP reports a monthly gain of 208,000 private sector jobs. October's ADP private payroll gains were a revised 203,000. Small businesses drove the payroll gains.
The Census released the monthly construction spending report today. Spending was $971 billion in October, up +1.1% from September and an increase of +3.3% from October 2013. This is a rebound from last month with the largest gain in five months. September was revised upward from -0.4% to -0.,1%. For just 2014, spending has increased 5.8%.
One of the more consequential economic releases we get monthly from the Bureau of Economic Analysis is on Personal Income and Outlays, which in addition to the important personal income data, also reports the monthly data on our personal consumption expenditures (PCE), which as we saw is the major component of GDP.. From that data, the BEA also computes personal savings and the national savings rate, as well as a
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