Why is the monthly jobs report so important to the markets?

Well, the jobs report is issued every month by the Labor Department, the first Friday of every month, and it really is a key economic indicator. The report surveys 150,000 businesses and government agencies around the country, and the unemployment rate surveys 60,000 households. The jobs report basically signals output, consumer spending. So, as you can well imagine, the stock markets rise and fall based on the jobs report.

Was there anything unexpected in last week's November jobs report?

So overall, that report was, as some economists said, a blockbuster. 266,000 jobs were created in November. That was the second highest total so far this year. The unemployment rate dropped slightly to three and a half percent. That's the lowest rate in nearly half a century.

William Hague: What is my prediction for the election?

Well, I think that conservatives will definitely have a bigger lead in votes over the Labour Party than at the last election, two years ago. Now that should give them a majority in the House of Commons. But then there will be tactical voting between Labour and Liberal voters against the Conservatives. And there are many undecided people at the last minute. So, I would go for a small conservative majority, maybe around 20 seats, which is also what some of the most sophisticated pollsters have said.

David Miliband: Who do you predict will win the UK elections?

I'm very careful about predictions, especially about the future, as someone famously said. The polls are pretty clear that this has been a dismal campaign, an unpopularity contest in all sorts of ways in which the lesser of two evils is perceived by the voters to be a conservative vote. So, the polls are giving a range of possibilities from a hung parliament right through to a large conservative majority. Obviously, I don't know who's going to win. My tour around the country last week gave me a real sense, a yearning really, for a better choice, for better choices, for more fronting up by the parties, because both parties have done a job of avoiding some of the hardest choices. And so, I predict that whoever wins, there are some very difficult choices ahead. And the sooner that politics is about what you're asking for as well as what you're offering. As Tawney said, after Labour lost the 1931 election, "we offered too much and asked too little." The sooner politics is about shared endeavor, the better for the country.