It’s been a while since the euro-zone crisis rumbled loud enough to bother investors around the world, but late last week Portugal halted trade in Banco Espirito Santo, which is the banking arm of one of that country’s largest conglomerate, with regulators citing “irregularities” in its accounts and asserting that it’s in “serious financial condition.”

Trulia reported that in June, U.S. home prices were up 8.1 percent year-over-year, and 2.6 percent quarter-over-quarter, both of which reflect a slowdown in average price increases.

The Federal Reserve’s massive, two-year stimulus of the economy—occasionally still called QE3—is now set to ride off into the sunset, according to the latest minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee.

U.S. consumer credit rose at an annualized 7.4 percent in May compared, according to the Federal Reserve. That’s a sizable increase, but not as much as in April, when the annualized increase was 10 percent.

The global economy ought to strengthen in the second half of 2014, and accelerate even more in 2015, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said.

A lot of industries were hiring in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reporting the month’s employment numbers ahead of the Independent Day holiday weekend. With June’s increase of 288,000 workers, that means that over the past three months, job growth has averaged 272,000 per month.

The U.S. economy created a robust net of 288,000 jobs in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In yet another metric confirming that home prices nationwide are still increasing but not as fast, CoreLogic reported that home prices, including distressed sales, increased 8.8 percent in May 2014 compared to the same month a year ago.