Sometimes taking a Road Less Traveled is where another truer reality may be found.
The general media loves bad news because it sell papers and TV time. There is nothing at all that get the juices flowing over sunshine. But we will go out of our way to hear about that horrible rain storm that is coming.
While the profits of doom hyperventilate about a world crashing, let me inject some good news for everyone to enjoy. It has been a busy week for good news and bad. It is just that the good is usually buried in the bad.
- Employers added about 2 times the new employees last month than experts expected.
- Factory orders edged up.
- Construction outlays surprised everyone as spending went up.3%
- Government reports on Friday indicate the economy is strong enough to avoid recession.
- Employers boosted payrolls by a surprisingly strong 166,000 in October, the most in five months, an encouraging sign that the nation’s employment climate is holding up relatively well against the strains of a housing collapse and credit crunch.
- Job gains were logged for professional and business services, education and health care, leisure and hospitality, and for the government.
- Those employment increases more than offset jobs losses in manufacturing, construction and retail — casualties of the problems plaguing the housing market.
- Orders placed to U.S. factories were up up 0.2 percent in September, an improvement compared with the 3.5 percent drop registered in August, this according to the Commerce Department in another report. Analysts actually expected a 0.4 percent decline.
- Average hourly earnings rose to $17.58 in October. Over the past 12 months, wages were up 3.8 percent.
- “Resiliency is the word,” Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said when asked what the latest employment figures say about the economy’s performance. “It suggests to me that businesses see growth continuing,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “There is nothing out there that would suggest we can’t absorb the housing correction,” he added.
- The economy, grew at a brisk 3.9 percent annual rate in the third quarter higher than expected.
- The Fed sliced its key rate by one-quarter percentage point to 4.50%, the second such reduction in in 6 weeks.
- Mortgage rates are at 5 month lows.
- The Labor Department said the national unemployment rate in October was unchanged at 4.7 percent.
- “I don’t know why the Fed is cutting rates in this environment, with full employment and when consumers are spending,” said economist Richard Yamarone of Argus Research in New York. “The economy is in no apparent need of stimulus, barring any unforeseen seize-up.”