Research Center

As expected, President Obama laid out numerous elements of his economic program in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, along with campaign-style dollops of criticism for Congress.

There’s optimism these days among economists regarding the U.S. economy, according to the National Association for Business Economics’ Industry Survey, with fully 65 percent of respondents expecting real GDP growth to increase.

Existing home sales rose 5 percent month-over-month in December, according to the National Association of Realtors on Friday, to an annualized rate of 4.61 million units, which for NAR purposes includes everything.

The U.S. Department of Labor reported on Thursday that for the week ending January 14th, initial unemployment claims totaled 352,000, a sharp decrease of 50,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 402,000.

Even homebuilders are feeling a little more optimistic these days, according to the latest National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, which was released on Wednesday.

The World Bank revised its prediction for the growth of the global economy in 2012 on Tuesday, and it wasn’t a change toward the upside.

Just when things in the euro zone were getting a little too quiet, Standard & Poors proved the rumors true late on Friday by downgrading the sovereign-debt rating of nine euro-using countries at one go.

U.S. retail sales in December edged up only slightly compared with November, seeing an increase of 0.1 percent.