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The U.S. economy got several positive signs Thursday, as a raft of reports showed jobless claims were down, new home construction reached a nine-year high, manufacturing activity stayed on the plus side and inflation seemed to be returning to normal levels. Jobless Claims The fewest Americans since 1973 filed for unemployment benefits last week, a sign that the U.S. labor market is getting tighter. Jobless claims dropped by 19,000 to 235,000 in the week ended Nov. 12, which included the Veterans Day holiday, a Labor Department report showed Thursday in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey called for...

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen reiterated Thursday that the case for an interest rate hike has strengthened and said that it would be "appropriate relatively soon," reinforcing expectations for an increase at next month's policy meeting. Yellen's testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress was her first major comments since the election of Donald Trump, who has has criticized the Fed chief's actions. Yellen said she expects to serve out her full term and cautioned against reversing financial reforms. Yellen said in her testimony: "I expect economic growth to continue at a moderate pace sufficient to generate some further...

Donald Trump and Janet Yellen don’t share much common ground. The president-elect and the Federal Reserve Chair have clashed over Trump’s claims that the Fed was picking sides in the election. He has also at times criticized the Fed’s recent easy-money policies as creating a “false economy.” But during a hearing before the Joint Economic Committee on Thursday, the Fed Chair indicated an area where she might welcome Trumpian reforms. During her testimony, Yellen argued that there were two worrying trends in the American economy: slow productivity growth and lackluster business investment. “My advice [to lawmakers] would be to [pursue...

A few weeks ago, across the Atlantic, the people of South Wales had occasion to mark a half century since one of the area's gravest tragedies. On October 21, 1966, a large coal slag, a huge pile of coalmine waste debris, fell over onto the town of Aberfan. In the direct wake of the avalanche was the Pantglas Junior School, completing the staggering tragedy that stole 116 children's lives, as well as those of 28 adults. Since 1947, the mine that had contributed the waste for the disaster was run by the National Coal Board, not any private company. It...

The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged Wednesday, avoiding any policy shift just ahead of the presidential election, as expected. The question going forward is whether policymakers will raise rates in December. Markets still expect a move at the next meeting but the odds have fallen in recent days as Donald Trump's rise in the polls adds to market uncertainty heading into Election Day. Stocks, already down heading into the 2 p.m. ET announcement, ultimately expanded losses modestly, closing near session lows. The S&P 500 suffered its seventh straight decline, hitting its lowest level since early July. The Fed statement...

When the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on June 15, among the stated reasons was concern about Brexit just a week ahead of the United Kingdom's fateful vote. Minutes of that meeting show that rate-setting committee members discussed the magnitude of the effect on financial markets from a U.K. vote to leave the European Union. "It is a decision that could have consequences for economic and financial conditions in global financial markets," Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said... ...Trump and Hillary Clinton are tied at 44% in the latest IBD/TIPP Presidential Election Tracking Poll... ...IBD'S TAKE: Stocks have fallen,...

As the Federal Reserve's long-awaited December rate hike approaches, the parallels with a year ago are both striking and a bit worrying. The dollar is surging against other major currencies as the Fed gets set to tighten policy, even as other major central banks plan to keep their monetary spigots wide open for the foreseeable future. Similar circumstances triggered a bout of global financial market turmoil at the start of 2016... ...strong dollar is a negative for U.S. multinationals... ...good news is that Fed policymakers also are on guard against a repeat of the global financial market turmoil... ...IBD'S TAKE:...

The U.S.economy only needs to generate about 75,000 jobs — and possibly as few as 50,000 — each month to maintain a healthy labor market, according to a study released Monday by the San Francisco Fed. That’s down sharply from the 192,000 average payroll gains seen over the past three months. Because the economy is close to what the Fed calls “full employment,” the future is less about creating an even stronger labor market than about maintaining a healthy one, said San Francisco Fed President John Williams in a speech last week.

Financial markets are beginning to believe the Federal Reserve. That's the simplest explanation for the tumble that major stock indexes took on Tuesday, which saw the 10-year Treasury yield rise to a four-month high and the U.S. dollar index hit its highest level in seven months. While the U.S. central bank's key overnight lending rate is barely above zero and policymakers have repeatedly reined in their intentions for further hikes, markets have taken each Fed pronouncement with a grain of salt. Whether investors doubted the Fed's resolve or its economic forecast, markets have been pricing in an even lower-rate future...

The last time the Fed hiked was in December of last year. Even though it was well-telegraphed, it still led to two months of heightened market volatility that saw the S&P 500 tumble 13 percent before recovering. If the minutes reveal a divided Fed that might try to accelerate the course of rate hikes in the year ahead, that likely would move markets.

Revelations that Federal Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard donated to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has created a tough situation for the central bank, at a time when Donald Trump has been accusing the Fed of making policy based on political bias. A day after Fed Chair Janet Yellen found herself in the hot seat on Capitol Hill over the Brainard donation, Kansas City Fed President Esther George danced around the issue on Thursday in a CNBC interview.

Former Philly Fed President Charles Plosser got a lot off his chest this morning during a Bloomberg TV interview. Decrying that central bankers "wring their hands all the time," Plosser noted that The Fed was very "concerned about credibility," and was "pretty good at conjuring up reasons not to act." His mutinous discussion then concluded, sounding very Trumpian, by noting that The Fed "shouldn't be afraid a recession might come," exclaiming "there's a real problem here" with The Fed.

Even with two years remaining in her term, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen may quit if Donald Trump is elected president, an economist argued on Tuesday. Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, said in a note to clients that Trump doubled down on criticism of the Fed during his debate with Hillary Clinton. Trump said the U.S. economy is in a “big, fat, ugly bubble” and specifically called out Yellen. “And we have a Fed that’s doing political things. This Janet Yellen of the Fed,” he said. “The day Obama goes off, and he leaves, and goes out...

Listening to Janet Yellen splitting hairs and blathering in circles about the state of the economy yesterday was enough to put you in mind of a paint-by-the-numbers robot built in the labs at MIT and programmed by its Keynesian economics department. After all, the latter has also inflicted on the world Paul Samuelson, Stanley Fischer, and his infamous student, Ben Bernanke.So why not a four-fer?There is only one question that Yellen needs to answer and then all else is readily explained. To wit, does she actually believe that the money market rate——as formerly measured by Fed funds before Bernanke nationalized the interbank market in September 2008——is a wholly owned property of the...

The U.S. Federal Reserve is still enabling financial markets. The central bank on Wednesday again declined to raise rates, despite recent remarks from Chair Janet Yellen suggesting an increase was becoming more likely. The Fed counts talking to the market – what it calls giving “forward guidance” – as one of its tools, but the story has changed so often that Yellen and her colleagues might do better being less chatty. The Fed initially signaled four rate hikes in 2016 after raising the range for the federal funds rate to 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent last December... ...the U.S. economy...

The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged Wednesday after its two-day policy meeting, as expected, and longer-term rate projections show an even slower pace of increases. Still, policymakers painted a mostly upbeat picture about the job market and overall growth and signaled that the Fed's key rate will rise before year-end. Markets have increasingly been pricing in a December hike... ...Fed's forecasts show policymakers expect three rate hikes through the end of 2017, down from five at their June meeting. The estimate for the fed funds rate in 2017 has slipped to 1.1% in 2017 from a 1.6% view in...

So who is Alan Greenspan suggesting is crazy? We ask because, according to the Bloomberg news ticker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve refused comment when asked to whom he was referring... ...a country to be undermined by — how should I say it — crazies.” No doubt the Democratic Party press is going to start suggesting that the crazies to whom Mr. Greenspan was referring are the Republicans lead by Donald Trump... ...might be prepared to see America default on the federal debt. He said he’d “borrowed knowing that you can pay back with discounts.” That drove the...

The betting is that the Federal Reserve won't raise interest rates at this week's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, its key policymaking body. There are already complaints that the Fed, which cut short-term rates to near zero in late 2008, is waiting too long to reverse low rates. Last December, the Fed increased rates by a quarter of a percentage point. It hasn't done anything since. "The Fed will make a major mistake if it doesn't raise rates," says economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics. "The job market is strong and very close to full employment. Inflation is...

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump told CNBC on Monday the Federal Reserve is doing what President Barack Obama wants by keeping interest rates low. Fed Chair Janet Yellen and central bank policymakers are very political, and Yellen should be “ashamed” of what she’s doing to the country, Trump said, adding the Fed is not even close to being independent. By keeping interest rates low, the Fed has created a “false stock market,” Trump argued in a wide-ranging interview in which he also talked about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s health problems . Trump said rates are being kept lower to bolster...

"...Donald Trump told reporters Monday that the Federal Reserve is keeping interests rates at record lows to help President Obama and to keep the economy from going down. "They’re keeping the rates artificially low so the economy doesn’t go down," Trump said in response to a question about a potential rate hike by the Federal Reserve this month. "So that Obama can say he did a good job. That's the only reason that the rates are so low. They're keeping the rates artificially low so that Obama can go out and play golf after January and say that he did...