No discussion of the prospects for our economy in 2012 would be complete without an examination of the housing sector. As daunting as the debt crisis in Europe is, there is no doubt that the real "x" factor is housing. This topic is so complex that it is hard to sort out. For example...

Coming back to the roots of the European debt crisis, Greece was back on center stage. For all the time that Greece has been in the headlines, most analysts have speculated that a default is only a matter of time. The question is not will it happen...

In all of our assessments regarding the future of our economy, there is always a warning attached which goes something like this -- unless the European debt crisis explodes. We had some good news regarding the economy in the past several weeks, especially with regard to the all-important employment sector. Last week there were not as many economic releases to focus upon. This enabled the markets to refocus upon events in Europe and...

Last week we talked about the many varied predictions regarding the economy for 2012. It makes sense that the next question will then be--what factor will be most important with regard to which prediction turns out to be correct? We can answer that question in one word--employment. There are many factors...

The New Year is here. Of course, now we are inundated with predictions regarding what will happen in the coming year. If you read 100 predictions, you would get 100 different scenarios. For example, in October...

With the European debt crisis hanging over the markets, our politicians continuing to act like children and now the markets worrying about the regime change in North Korea, there seems to be no end to the scary headlines. Even if the news is not scary, the media is pumping up bad news. For example, last week the National Association of Realtors adjusted home sales...

As we all take a break during the Holidays, we can reflect upon the events over the past year. It was certainly an eventful year--from global natural disasters to revolutions in many countries to the European debt crisis. Any one of many events could have brought our economy back into recession, yet we go into the New Year with renewed financial vigor. The recovery from our recession…

We can't go a day without viewing headlines concerning the debt crisis in Europe. While this causes day-to-day anxiety in the markets, it is actually good news for us because of two reasons. For one, our economy is actually expanding and the threat of a double dip recession has subsided. Therefore...

It is quite striking when you compare one week to the next in the financial markets. The 10 days before Thanksgiving were brutal. Stocks were diving, Europe was tipping into chaos and it looked like we were surely heading into another slowdown next quarter. We come back from the Thanksgiving Holiday and we are all brimming with optimism. What happened?

Black Friday has arrived and that means that the Holiday spending frenzy has begun. This season is a very important measure of the health of the economy every year. This year, the results could be even more important.