Research Center

Even though it was Columbus Day, U.S. equities markets weren’t closed on Monday, and investors took advantage of the open markets to buy and then buy some more.

Recent employment trends haven’t been particularly positive. Since April, payroll employment has increased by an average of 72,000 jobs per month, compared with an average increase of 161,000 during the seven months before this April.

According to ADP, private U.S. businesses hired a net of 91,000 workers in September, a little up from August’s revised figure of 89,000.

Are there grounds for optimism about the European economy? Maybe in Ireland. The Irish economy posted a 1.6 percent quarterly GDP gain from the first to the second quarter of 2011.

According to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home-price indexes released on Tuesday, U.S. home prices were up in July for the fourth month in a row.

New home sales dropped 2.3 percent from July to August to an annualized rate of 295,000 units, according to the U.S. Census Bureau on Monday.

Various Euro-zone policymakers, perhaps embarrassed that even the U.S. Treasury Secretary can take them to task for not dealing with their debt crisis any better than they have, met in Washington over the weekend to hash things out.