After climbing to almost $70 a barrel earlier this month, Brent Crude, now selling at around $56 per barrel, is down some 17 percent, in part, as global trading markets reacted to the spread of the coronavirus. China, the center of the viral outbreak, is the world’s second-largest oil consumer and is expected to see...
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IMPEACHMENT STUPIDITY
On 24 September 2019, when it was announced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated the impeachment process against President Donald Trump, Gerald Celente was asked by Daniela Cambone, Editor-in-Chief of Kitco News, how it would unfold. Celente said impeachment “could possibly happen, but it won’t mean anything because if they impeach Trump then it has to...
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INDIA: ECONOMIC DANGER AHEAD
India has suffered six consecutive quarters of slowing economic growth and disappearing jobs, causing layoffs, reduced household incomes, and, as we have noted in our Geopolitical section, rising public unrest. The economy grew by 4.8 percent in 2019, far below the 6.8-percent pace of 2018. Inflation accelerated and businesses all but stopped investing. And, among economists, there are...
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MEXICO: ECONOMY SHRINKS IN 2019
Mexico’s economy contracted by 0.3 percent in the final three months of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018. The contraction, the first in 10 years, occurred during the inaugural year in office of leftist president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The number concerned analysts, many of whom expected a less severe shrinkage. The country’s...
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BRITAIN: BUSINESSES ON THE BRINK
Nearly 500,000 British businesses are teetering on the edge of financial collapse, according to Begbies Traynor, a firm that helps companies restructure to deal with insolvency. The number reached 494,000 in 2019’s fourth quarter, compared to 481,000 in the last three months of 2018. The number of British businesses in “significant distress” has risen 81...
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HARLEY SALES FALL
Harley Davidson reported its 2019 sales were 4.3 percent below sales in 2018. The decline was 5.3 percent in the U.S., the motorcycle company’s biggest market. The drop in sales is due in part to Baby Boomers aging out of the market and younger consumers having less interest in recreational vehicles. Harley’s share prices dropped...
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BUSINESS INVESTMENT SAGGED IN FOURTH QUARTER
The U.S. Commerce Department reported that orders for non-defense capital goods fell to $686 billion in December 2019, their lowest level in eight months and the third consecutive quarterly drop. When defense-related investment was factored into the calculation, business investment overall rose by 2.4 percent in December. Indeed, in his State of the Union address,...
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BRICK-AND-MORTAR RETAIL ON THE ROPES
About one in 10 retailers listed on stock exchanges have gone bankrupt since 2008, and 40 percent of retailers have seen their profit margins shrink during that time. The financial value of shopping malls as real estate has fallen by almost a third since 2016. Analysts predict that half of remaining shopping-mall department stores will...
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NO END TO TRILLION-DOLLAR DEFICITS
The U.S. government will spend at least $1 trillion more than it collects in revenues in 2020 and will do so throughout this decade and probably beyond, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). That means this year the federal government will spend $1.28 for every $1.00 it takes in. The CBO estimates that accumulated...
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HOME PRICES EDGE UP
Average home prices in major U.S. metro areas rose 3.5 percent in early January, up from 3.2 percent in December. Prices gained in each of the 20 metro areas monitored by the CoreLogic Case-Schiller U.S. National Home Price Index. December was 2019’s strongest month for home sales, up 3.6 percent. Gains are driven by continued...