Free Republic

Treasury prices rallied further on Monday on expectations of a halt to rising interest rates, although the market faces a hawkish U.S. Federal Reserve that aims to see inflation truly slowing before it can pivot. Fed Chair Jerome Powell could insist when he speaks on Tuesday that more time is needed to show inflation is under control. But consumer price data on Thursday could bolster the market's view that inflation is on track towards the Fed's 2% target.

Jamie Dimon is sounding the alarm on auto loans. "Auto is clearly a little stretched, in my opinion," the JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO said Thursday morning, speaking at the Alliance Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York. "Someone is going to get hurt... we don't do much of that." But other lenders have. The average size of new auto loans is rising, as is the average payment size, according to research from Experian released Thursday morning. In May, the total amount of auto loans cracked the $1 trillion mark for the first time, marking a 10 percent increase. It comes...

Pedestrians have sometimes felt neglected when it comes to GPS directions. Indeed, not so long ago, one lady sued Google because the directions its map offered led her (she believed) to be struck by a car. Now Microsoft has been granted a patent that is designed to make its maps more pedestrian-friendly. Somehow, this patent has immediately been dubbed the "avoid ghetto" feature.

For the first time since 1949, the United States is poised to become a net exporter of petroleum, according to the Petroleum Supply Monthly report for November, put out by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Jeremy Friesen, a commodity strategist at Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg News that part of the reason for the shift is that America's consumption of oil has remained stagnant compared to the rest of the world. "The U.S. has been flat or down for overall oil consumption versus the world, which continues to rise mainly due to emerging markets," he said. "Latin...