Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Gallup's Economic Confidence Index improved to -21 during the week ending Jan. 9, 2011 --
considerably better than December's -28, but essentially the same as the -22 of the same week in 2010.
– Gallup
Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs' asset-management unit, said the situation in the euro
bond markets and the single currency will improve by the end of 2011. – Bloomberg
Claims Show U.S. Unemployment Has Further to Fall – Claims for unemployment-insurance
payments in the U.S. have fallen far enough to foreshadow “an employment-driven decline in the
jobless rate,” according to Robert V. DiClemente, chief U.S. economist at Citigroup Inc.

GS – the co will release a 63pg report today offering up more details to stakeholders, inc.
disclosing for the first time how much revs come from the firm’s own trading and investing. The change
in the co’s reporting structure will start w/the upcoming Q4 earnings. New procedures will be put in
place to ensure clients aren’t taken advantage of. However, there are no major changes planned for the
co’s mgmt structure or its overall business strategy. – WSJ
Is there a better measure of well-being than gross domestic product? A panel at the American
Economic Association meeting over the weekend took a stab at this question, discussing several papers,
including the one excerpted below, from Carol Graham of the Brookings Institution. The first chart
shows that while richer countries are happier than poorer ones, there is no clear relationship within
each set of countries. The second shows that after the recent financial crisis “people seemed to be able
to return to previous happiness levels, while makig do with less income or wealth.” – Source