Economy and Politics

The French and German economies returned to growth in the three months to September, data showed Friday, but their modest expansions indicate the wider eurozone remains mired in a prolonged economic torpor.

The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of cellphones through fake communications towers deployed on airplanes, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging a large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday "all options are on the table" to stop President Barack Obama from acting alone on immigration policy. Boehner gave that reply when asked if he would include language limiting Obama from acting in a bill to fund the government past Dec. 11. Obama has said he plans to act before the end of the year. Earlier Thursday, the New York Times reported Obama will announce as soon as next week an overhaul of the immigration-enforcement system. It would protect up to five million undocumented immigrants from deportation and provide many of them with work permits, the Times said.

Retail sales are expected to snap back in October after falling in the prior month, but investors are may need to look past the latest report for signs on how holiday shopping is shaping up.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, one of the more dovish members of the central bank, on Thursday suggested he could support a rate hike next year depending how data evolved. "My inflation outlook could rise. If so, my preferred date of interest rate 'lift-off' would come forward in time-possibly into next year," he said. But he said a falling unemployment rate is no reason to tighten policy unless that fall is generating unduly high inflationary pressure, as he says under his current outlook it would be inappropriate to raise rates next year. Kocherlakota is a voting Federal Open Market Committee member this year, but won't be again until 2017.

The Dallas Fed on Thursday released a video tribute to it soon-to-be-retiring president, Richard Fisher, featuring luminaries including Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and even former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. On Twitter, the reception wasn’t as kind.

Elizabeth Warren has a new leadership role with the Senate Democrats. The liberal favorite will be a policy adviser when the next Congress convenes, and says she’ll fight for working families.

The federal government’s budget deficit was $122 billion in October, the first month of the 2015 fiscal year, an increase of 34% from the same month a year ago. But the higher figure was the result of calendar shifts, not a worsening fiscal picture.

After President Barack Obama’s call for stricter net neutrality rules, here’s a look at how other countries in the global community have handled the hotly debated topic.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. government ran a budget deficit of $122 billion in October, the Treasury Department said Thursday. The shortfall is $31 billion, or 34%, more than in the same month a year ago. The government spent $334 billion in October, an increase of 16% from last October. Receipts totaled $213 billion in October, an increase of 7%. October is the first month of the 2015 fiscal year, which runs through September.

The number of Americans applying for unemployment compensation is near a 15-year low, but a higher percentage than usual still don’t find jobs before their benefits run out.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Dallas Fed on Thursday announced its president, Richard Fisher, will retire on March 19. It had been known that Fisher was due to retire in 2015, but this was the first time a date has been set. The Dallas Fed said it will consider candidates from both inside and outside the bank and has retained Heidrick & Struggles to conduct the search for Fisher's replacement.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Sen. Harry Reid will be the next Senate Minority Leader, Democrats announced Thursday after a closed-door meeting. Reid told reporters his leadership team includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Has Germany slipped into a triple-dip recession? That’s a major question waiting to be answered with the third-quarter gross-domestic-product numbers that are released Friday morning.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The House of Representatives will vote Friday on a bill to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a House Republican aide said. Lawmakers will debate the bill Thursday. The legislation is authored by Rep. Bill Cassidy, a Republican facing Democrat Mary Landrieu in Louisiana's Dec. 6 Senate runoff election. Landrieu also supports the project and a separate Senate vote is expected early next week. Earlier Thursday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the Obama administration has taken a "dim view" of congressional proposals to approve the controversial pipeline. But he did not explicitly threaten a veto.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser on Thursday said he doesn't know whether the U.S. economy has entered a period of so-called secular stagnation, and that in any case, it wouldn't be something to be addressed by monetary policy. Secular stagnation refers to the concept, popularized by former Treasury Sec. Larry Summers, that there's period of low growth and reduced productivity that may last for some time. Plosser says it's very hard to determine the longer-term growth rate of the economy, and it often takes many years of data to establish whether there's a change in trend.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Sen. Mitch McConnell was elected majority leader for the next Senate, reports said Thursday. The selection of McConnell by his fellow Senate Republicans was unanimous. McConnell, of Kentucky, now serves as Senate minority leader. He will assume his new role when the next Congress convenes in January.

So, want to see the jobs market the way Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen does? Courtesy of the statistics she cited in one of her major speeches, you can do just that.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The number of job openings fell to a seasonally adjusted 4.74 million in September from 4.85 million in August, which was a 13-year high, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. Hiring of 5.03 million in September was the highest since December 2007 and up from 4.74 million in August, to move the hiring rate to 3.6% from 3.4% in August. The 2.8 million people who quit in September was the highest level since April 2008, taking the quits rate to 2% from 1.8%.