Unit­ed States: The week end­ed De­cem­ber 2 high­light­ed da­ta on con­sumer con­fi­dence, the labour mar­ket and the hous­ing mar­ket.The Con­fer­ence Board con­fi­dence in­dex in­creased to 56 from a re­vised read­ing of 40.9 in Oc­to­ber. This rep­re­sent­ed the biggest month­ly gain since April 2003.This im­prove­ment in the in­dex may help sus­tain house­hold pur­chas­es af­ter sales surged at the start of the hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son, Black Fri­day and Cy­ber Mon­day on No­vem­ber 25 and 28, re­spec­tive­ly.In terms of the hous­ing mar­ket, the in­dex of pend­ing home sales in­creased 10.4 per cent, the biggest gain since No­vem­ber 2010, af­ter falling 4.6 per cent the pre­vi­ous month.While mort­gage rates near record lows are help­ing buy­ers pur­chase hous­ing that is grow­ing more af­ford­able as prices drop, the high un­em­ploy­ment rate and tight lend­ing stan­dards are keep­ing oth­ers from the mar­ket.

On a year on year ba­sis, pend­ing home sales in­creased 7.4 per cent.The labour re­port re­lease on De­cem­ber 2 came as a sur­prise to the mar­ket as the job­less rate fell to 8.6 per cent, a lev­el not seen since March 2009. For the month of No­vem­ber, em­ploy­ment climbed by 120,000 work­ers, with more than half the hir­ing com­ing from re­tail­ers and tem­po­rary help agen­cies.Dur­ing the month of Oc­to­ber, 100,000 work­ers were added to the work­force. De­spite the much wel­comed im­prove­ment in the labour rate, part rea­son for the de­cline was due to a drop in the par­tic­i­pa­tion rate as work­ers left the work­force, giv­ing up on their search from jobs.Al­though this was the case, the low­er rate bodes well for the econ­o­my as it shows some sign of re­cov­ery for the labour mar­ket.

Oth­er da­ta re­leased dur­ing the week showed an im­prove­ment in man­u­fac­tur­ing as the ISM Man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dex in­creased to 52.7 from 50.8 in Oc­to­ber.The stronger man­u­fac­tur­ing was punc­tu­at­ed by gains in or­ders and pro­duc­tion. Job­less claims dur­ing the hol­i­day-short­ened week, climbed by 6,000 to 402,000 in the week end­ed No­vem­ber 25, which cast some doubt over the labour mar­ket ahead of the pos­i­tive labour re­port on De­cem­ber 2.For the first week in De­cem­ber, lim­it­ed da­ta re­leas­es are ex­pect­ed, how­ev­er no­table ones in­clude the ISM ser­vices in­dex and the trade bal­ance re­port.

Eu­ro-zone

1. On No­vem­ber 30, 2011, the Bank of Cana­da, the Bank of Eng­land, the Bank of Japan, the Eu­ro­pean Cen­tral Bank, the Fed­er­al Re­serve and the Swiss Na­tion­al Bank an­nounced a co-or­di­nat­ed ef­fort to en­hance their ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide liq­uid­i­ty to the glob­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem.The cen­tral banks have agreed to low­er the pric­ing on the ex­ist­ing tem­po­rary US dol­lar liq­uid­i­ty swap arrange­ments by 50 ba­sis points (bps). Un­der the dol­lar liq­uid­i­ty-swap pro­gramme, the Fed lends dol­lars to the ECB and oth­er cen­tral banks in ex­change for cur­ren­cies, in­clud­ing eu­ros.The cen­tral banks then lend dol­lars to com­mer­cial banks in their ju­ris­dic­tions through an auc­tion process. The ac­tion is ex­pect­ed to ease strain on fi­nan­cial mar­kets and mit­i­gate the ef­fect of these strains on the sup­ply of cred­it to house­holds and busi­ness­es so as to help fos­ter eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

2. The ECB an­nounced on De­cem­ber 2, 2011, that it would pro­vide US$270 bil­lion in sup­port to the eu­ro-zone via the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF). This al­lows to the ECB to in­di­rect­ly en­gage in as­set pur­chas­ing which would oth­er­wise be in vi­o­la­tion of their man­date to con­trol in­fla­tion.

3. Ger­man Chan­cel­lor An­gela Merkel and French Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy will hold talks in Paris on De­cem­ber 5, 2011, to dis­cuss clos­er eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion and tougher polic­ing of fis­cal rules. The dis­cus­sion comes ahead of a meet­ing of eu­ro-zone lead­ers on De­cem­ber 9 aimed at fur­ther­ing talks on the res­o­lu­tion of the cri­sis.

4. The Ital­ian Cab­i­net has ap­proved a 30 bil­lion eu­ro (US$40 bil­lion) pack­age of emer­gency eco­nom­ic mea­sures to shore up the coun­try's fi­nances. Italy's prime min­is­ter is due to present the plan to the leg­is­la­ture on De­cem­ber 5, 2011, and par­lia­ment may vote on the mea­sure by the end of the month.

5. The Greek par­lia­ment will vote on their 2012 bud­get on De­cem­ber 6, 2011. The bud­get pro­pos­es a sharp re­duc­tion in the bud­get deficit from an es­ti­mat­ed 9 per cent of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct in FY 2011 to 5.4 per cent in the FY 2012.

6. The ECB will hold its month­ly meet­ing on De­cem­ber 8, 2011. It will de­cide at this meet­ing whether its pol­i­cy in­ter­est rate will be cut again from its cur­rent 1.25 per cent lev­el, fol­low­ing a 25 bps re­duc­tion at last month's meet­ing.

Cred­it Rat­ing Changes:Unit­ed States: On No­vem­ber 28, 2011, Fitch re­vised its out­look on the US to neg­a­tive, cit­ing that in­creas­ing fis­cal chal­lenges with re­gards to the lack of con­sen­sus on pro­posed bud­get cuts. Fitch is the lat­est rat­ings agency to post a neg­a­tive out­look on US sov­er­eign rat­ing.Moody's has a neg­a­tive out­look and S&P down­grad­ed the sov­er­eign in Au­gust and main­tains a neg­a­tive out­look.

T&T stock mar­ket:TTSE Com­pos­ite In­dexsees mar­gin­al de­cline

The Com­pos­ite In­dex saw a mar­gin­al in­crease dur­ing the week end­ing De­cem­ber 2, in­creas­ing by 0.05 per cent to a val­ue of 1,009.59 as eight stocks ad­vanced, sev­en de­clined and 24 re­mained un­changed. Ja­maican cross-list­ed stocks dom­i­nat­ed mar­ket per­for­mance dur­ing the week.Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank of Ja­maica (NCBJ) was the week­ly vol­ume leader with 65,554 shares trad­ing at a clos­ing price of $2.20.Cap­i­tal and Cred­it Fi­nan­cial Group Ltd (CCFG) saw the largest price ap­pre­ci­a­tion ris­ing by 6.67 per cent dur­ing the week to a close of $00.32.Supreme Ven­tures Ltd (SVL) saw the largest price de­cline falling by 10 per cent dur­ing the week to a close of $0.18.Year-to-date, the TTSE Com­pos­ite In­dex is up 20.82 per cent.