Officials from two major airlines said last week that they expect that the industry will take years to recover from COVID and one warned, “Make no mistake – we’re still in the early miles of this marathon.” The Wall Street Journal reported these companies face two predominant challenges, which include getting would-be passengers over the...
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AIRLINE PROFITS CRASHING
As the COVID War still rages and nation and states impose a laundry list of draconian travel/quarantine regulations, airline profits are crashing. Delta Air Lines burned through $18 million every day in September and will continue to bleed cash into next spring, said CEO Ed Bastain. Delta has fired 18,000 workers; another 40,000 have opted...
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A NEW KIND OF ATOMIC POWER
Graphene, a sheet of carbon just one atom thick, is used for everything from cooling cell phone batteries to contactless key cards to making ink. Now researchers at the University of Alabama have proposed to use it as a power generator. Sheets of graphene ripple at room temperature as heat affects the microscopically thin material...
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SWEDEN: THE FUTURE OF ENERGY?
In a world moving away from fossil fuels, Sweden is demonstrating a workable path in that direction. A majority of the country’s homes are connected to one of more than 500 “district heating” systems, which generates heat in a central plant and pipes it to a network of buildings. Homes can still regulate their own...
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REVERSING THE HEART’S AGING PROCESS
It’s been known for a decade that when infant mice’s hearts are damaged, they can regenerate new heart tissue in the first seven days of life. Now researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have found their secret. It could be used to turn sick old human hearts young and healthy again. The...
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BIG BANKS, BIG PROFITS WARNING
JPMorgan Chase, the biggest U.S. bank, reported third-quarter profits up 4 percent from the same period a year earlier. Goldman Sachs boasted a $3.62-billion profit for the period, beating analysts’ expectation of $2 billion. Citigroup posted a milder loss for the period than expected. Goldman Sachs noted a 49-percent increase in profits from bond-trading and...
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CRYPTO EFTs COMING
The U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), Comptroller of the Currency, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are in discussions to chart a course toward crypto versions of exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, said SEC chair Jay Clayton. The plan, so-called “tokenization,” would allow a designated cryptocurrency asset, similar to Bitcoin, to represent a single stock or fund,...
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CONSUMER SPENDING CLIMBS, POVERTY RISES
American consumers spent 1.9 percent more in September than in August, more than double the rate analysts were expecting. Clothing and department stores saw sales rise 11 percent, some of which analysts attribute to back-to-school purchases. Sales of health and beauty products, seen as non-essential during the shutdown, were up 1.5 percent. Grocery sales were...
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U.S. ANNUAL DEFICIT TRIPLES TO RECORD LEVEL
The annual U.S. budget shortfall tripled to a record $3.1 trillion, or 16.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product, in the fiscal year ended 30 September, according to the U.S. Treasury department. The new debt resulted from efforts to fight the pandemic and recover from the ensuing economic shutdown that continues across large swaths of the...
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SMALL BUSINESS DOWN, BIG BUSINESS UP
One in every five businesses operating last January has stopped doing business entirely, according to Womply, a business services website that estimates most of those idle businesses have closed permanently. Of 6,325 small businesses surveyed by business network website Alignable, 40 percent reported being at risk of failure before 2020 is over. Bank loans are...