Common Cents Blog

Last night, my wife asked me what I thought about the impending government shutdown. Would it ruin the economy? Is the government really out of money? You know Molly (a friend) has already been furloughed up…

This week, the monetary policy making arm of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), left the target overnight lending rate between member banks unchanged. The upper bound remains at 5.50%, and the lower…

On Friday, June 30th 2023, something big happened. Not only did it mark the end of the first half of 2023, but it was also a very good day in the stock market. The S&P 500…

We all know the phrase self-fulfilling prophecy. In the Cleveland Clinic’s words: “Self-fulfilling prophecies occur when a prediction brings about its own fulfillment. In layman’s terms, that means that if you believe something to be true,…

Is there a better way to celebrate the upcoming Labor Day Weekend than with a week’s worth of slightly softer job market data? Don’t get me wrong. The numbers weren’t awful. In a simpler time, we…

The greater the authority the government has over the economic decision making process, the lesser the economic returns will be. This week, the so-called BRICS bloc of nations held its annual summit in Johannesburg. In case…

Either inflation and inflation expectations need to come down OR interest rates need to go up… Markets in the Red. This week was the pits in the markets, with plenty of red ink to go around.…

This past week, I had a conversation with a couple of co-workers about which languages we took in high school. One had taken French, the other took German and I made it through five years of…

Usually, the Employment Situation report is the biggest story on the first Friday of the month. Internally, we call this economic release “the granddaddy of them all,” and pore over the underlying data to determine how…