NATION
Tidings of Comfort and Jobs
The U.S. economy delivered an outpouring of good cheer as the Christmas shopping season got into full swing. The economy created a whopping 350,000 new jobs in November, far exceeding the forecast of economists and dropping the unemployment rate .2%, to a four-year low of 5.6%. The new jobs helped boost the Conference Board's index of consumer confidence in November to its highest level in four years; the personal income of Americans grew a healthy 1.4%. Measures of consumer spending and manufacturing strength also surged. About the only dissonant note was the likelihood that all...