Economy/Ecommerce

Word is that the latest idea to fend off Europe’s woes is the sooner creation of the European Stability Mechanism, which would be a permanent successor to the European Financial Stability Facility.

Looking to shore up the wobbly euro, French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Merkel told the rest of the euro-zone governments that it was time to accept more centralized control of fiscal policy, or else.

Friday’s official jobs numbers by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that employment continued to trend up in several areas. All levels of government employment continued to trend down, as has been the case since mid-2008.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the economy added 120,000 jobs in November, more than October’s 80,000, but still not enough to indicate a healthy jobs situation.

In a joint, directed effort on Wednesday, the major-league central banks in the world suddenly cut the price of borrowing dollars to forestall a liquidity crisis among European banks.

As expected, the efforts of the Congressional super committee (the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction) ended with a whimper on Monday when both sides conceded that compromise was impossible.

The U.S. Department of Commerce said that new single-family residential starts were at an annualized rate of 434,000 units in October. That’s a 5.1 percent increase month-over-month.

Italian prime minster Silvio Berlusconi resigned his post on Saturday and shuffled off into political retirement, though he remains a billionaire media mogul. On the other side of the world, the Japanese government reported a burst of activity in the country’s economy.