The February US retail sales data was much stronger than expected, even when taking into account the downward revisions in January.  A picture of a broadening of the recovery is emerging.   Looking at the Jan-Fed period combined, the headline rate rose a combined 0.4% and the market had expected a 0.3% increase, but the real [...]

Obama to tap Yellen for Fed vice chair:source| Reuters
BBC News – Rove ‘proud’ of US waterboarding terror suspects
Walmart vende la Barbie negra a mitad de precio que la blanca ¿discriminación? – elConfidencial.com
Examiner sees gimmicks in Lehman demise| Reuters
FDIC: Failed Bank Information – Bank Closing Information for LibertyPointe Bank, New York, NY
Americans’ [...]

Highlights
The US dollar is lower against most currencies with the European currencies leading.  Talk of an EU rescue package for Greece on the order of 55 bln euros has contributed to the moves helping to trigger stops.  The euro briefly broke up out of the $1.3436-$1.3788 range in which the currency has been trading since [...]

The Financial Times has caught wind of a letter sent by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to to the EU’s Michel Barnier. In only thinly-veiled language Mr. Geithner accused the EU of financial protectionism for the way Brussels is moving forward with rules to regulate hedge funds and other parts of the shadow banking system. [...]

Seasonally-adjusted jobless claims dipped 6,000 to 462,000 for the week ending 6 Mar 2010. This is significantly lower than the revised 498,000 number we saw two weeks prior. Nevertheless, 4-week average jobless claims are still over 475,000. This number is actually higher than the previous week’s 470,500 average.

At least we are seeing some incipient [...]

So why did we rescue this institution with a massive bailout? Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the Congressional Oversight panel of the TARP program, doesn’t understand any more than taxpayers do. This is another example of the malinvestment and zombie finance which bailouts have fostered.
Here’s a question for you: if GMAC was a U.S. auto financing [...]

Canada reported a larger than expected trade surplus earlier today.  At C$0.8 bln, it was four times larger than expected and the December figures were revised to show a C$0.1 bln surplus instead of a C$0.2 bln deficit.  Canada also reported a strong rise in Q4 capacity utilization rate to 70.9% from a revised 68.7% [...]

I hadn’t seen an advance release of the January German export data, when I wrote the following on Tuesday, honest injun I hadn’t:
Well, this is only a hypothesis. But if the hypothesis has any validity we should be able to make some predictions on the basis of it. I would make two. Firstly, since East [...]

FT.com – Spain has the means to avoid Greece’s fate
FT.com – Mohamed El-Erian – How to handle the sovereign debt explosion
BofA under regulatory pressure to shrink: report| Reuters
Second Lien Writedowns, II « Rortybomb
Discouraged older job seekers give up, calling themselves retired – MSN Money
Chase Returns Retired Teacher’s Stolen $6,200 – [...]

August 2009 was the high point of American’s satisfaction with the economy during Barack Obama’s tenure. Interestingly, this meshes with the data on the ground. In a recent interview, Simoleon Sense quoted James Montier as saying that his favourite real-time economic indicator is the ADS Business Conditions Index charted below (hat tip Philly Fed [...]