Finance

About 36,000 employees were shown the door in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, but it wasn’t enough to budge the official unemployment rate of 9.7 percent. Moreover, it was fewer job losses than expected.

While a decent amount of indicators are looking brighter than in years or even months past, the amount of loan maturities coming up in the next several years could put a dent in that optimism.

The Federal Reserve released its latest “Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions by Federal Reserve District,” otherwise known as the Beige Book, on Wednesday. The economy is growing, according to the report, but modestly.

Green Street Advisors reported on Tuesday that its Commercial Property Price Index rose by 1 percent in February, compared with the previous month. According to the company, U.S. commercial property values have now risen by a little more than 10 percent since hitting a trough in May 2009, but values are still off by roughly 30 percent from their ’07 peak.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce on Monday, consumer spending ticked upward by 0.5 percent in January. The gain followed a 0.3 percent increase in December, and was more than economists expected.

What does the Oracle of Omaha now have to say about the housing market? “Within a year or so residential housing problems should largely be behind us, the exceptions being only high-value houses and those in certain localities where overbuilding was particularly egregious,” Warren Buffett noted in his letter to Bershire Hathaway shareholders on Friday.

Reports from Apple Inc.’s annual shareholder meeting in Cupertino, Calif., on Thursday noted some retail expansion news from the leading gadget-creator of our time. Namely, the company plans to open 25 stores in China over the next two years; apparently Steve Jobs himself mentioned the plans.