A whopping 65 percent of voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction – the highest percentage the poll has ever measured before a midterm election.
http://www.nbcnews.com/...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. consumer confidence rebounded strongly in October, hitting a seven-year high as solid job gains raised expectations for economic growth.
The Conference Board said Tuesday that its confidence index climbed to 94.5, the strongest reading since October 2007 and the start of the Great Recession a few months later. This month's gains reversed a revised decline to 89 in September from 93.4 in August.
http://finance.yahoo.com/...
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The National Retail Federation said this morning that it expects holiday retail sales to grow 4.1% to $617 billion. That would mark a substantial increase in the rate of growth over both the 3.1% growth seen in 2013 and the 2.9% ten year average.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
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Gasoline is averaging $3.01 a gallon nationally—down 8.2 percent from an average $3.28 a year ago, according to AAA figures.
Sageworks, a financial information company, reports retail sales among private companies with less than $5 million in annual revenue have seen 4.5 percent growth in annual sales through September of this year. That's up 5.5 percent from the same period a year ago. That's a slight revenue gain as gasoline prices have been above the $3 mark for the past couple of months.
http://www.cnbc.com/...
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Today, more Americans have health insurance than ever before.
Since the Affordable Care Act went into effect, an additional 10 million people who would have previously had to pay full price for any health treatment can now afford an annual checkup, eye glasses, or birth control pills.
In states that embraced the ACA's planned expansion of Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, the number of uninsured fell by nearly 40%.
http://finance.yahoo.com/...
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Unemployment hits a six-year low at 5.9 percent.
The US economy added 248,000 jobs in September and pushed the unemployment rate down to 5.9 percent in an unexpectedly strong report.
http://www.csmonitor.com/...
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The U.S. economy expanded at a 3.5% rate in the third quarter, fueled by stronger government spending and exports. Many economists considered the report positive, though a slowdown in global growth could mean weakness in the coming months.
“The crux of the GDP report was broadly constructive, with the gains broadly based and pointing to positive underlying momentum in the U.S. economy going into the last stretch of 2014. The upbeat assessment on the recovery should provide some vindication to the Fed’s more constructive view on the economic outlook, and it will be seen as an indication that much of the strong underlying momentum in the second quarter carried into the third quarter.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/...
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