First time claims for unemployment insurance fell 10,000 to 332,000 for the week ending March 9, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists expected 350,000 initial unemployment claims. The drop in filings the third in the last four weeks resumed a downward trend in layoffs.

Led by a surge in gasoline prices, retail sales rose 1.1 percent in February, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday. Economists had expected an increase of 0.5 percent. In January, retails sales rose 0.2 percent.

The number of layoffs fell 4.0 percent to 1,507,000 in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) release. The layoff total was the smallest since the JOLTS reports began in December 2000.

According to the Flow of Funds report for Q4 2012, household assets grew to $79.5 trillion in the fourth quarter, an increase of $1.3 trillion--not too shabby. Household financial assets were up $784 billion to $54.4 billion but home equity (the value of household real estate less loans against that real estate) grew $452.8 billion, the result of two moving parts: real estate values (which increased) and household mortgage liabilities, which dropped. Once the dust settled, it meant equity in household real estate assets moved to 46.6 percent in the Q4.

The economy added 236,000 jobs in February and the unemployment rate slipped to 7.7 percent, its lowest level since December 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday. Economists had forecast payrolls would grow by 160,000 and that the unemployment rate would remain at 7.8 percent.

The President has tried repeatedly to describe the impact of sequestration, a mandatory across-the-board cut in federal spending exempting only a small handful of social safety net programs. Despite those exemptions, a simple fact is that people will die as a result of these cuts, and lives could be changed irrevocably. The tragedy in this is not what might happen, although that's pretty severe long-term. The tragedy is both Democrats and Republicans have the means to fix it without having to resort to face-saving techniques.

Personal income dropped $505.5 billion, or 3.6 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) fell $491.4 billion, or 4.0 percent, in January, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported Friday. The income drop was steeper than the 2.1 percent decline economists had expected.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported Thursday. Last month, in the advance GDP release, BEA had reported the nation's economy contracted by 0.1 percent, the first "negative growth" since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009. Economists had expected the turnaround, but to a stronger 0.5 percent growth rate. BEA said the revision is based on more complete data than were available for the "advance" estimate issued last month.

First-time claims for unemployment insurance fell 22,000 to 344,000 for the week ending February 23, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Meanwhile, the number of continuing claims fell to the lowest level in almost five years.

New home sales jumped 15.6 percent in January--the strongest gain in 20 years--to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 437,000, the Census Bureau and HUD reported Tuesday. The sharp increase in sales combined with steep price drops suggests builders are taking aggressive actions to pare inventories. Housing completions (as reported separately by Census and HUD) routinely exceed new home sales, and the gap between completions and sales has been widening.