In China’s 618 E-Commerce Festival this month – a sort of Amazon Prime Day for all online retailers there – Babycare domestic diapers outsold Pampers, online giant Alibaba reported. In 2020’s Singles Day, China’s biggest online shopping holiday, Genki Forest, a Chinese soft drink, passed both Coke and Pepsi in sales. On Singles Day in...
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OPEC+ MULLING PRODUCTION INCREASES AS OIL SHORTAGE LOOMS
OPEC+, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, mainly Russia, are considering authorizing production hikes at their 1 July meeting. As demand and supply move closer to each other, Russia may propose that the group boost output, Russian officials told Bloomberg. Other member nations are mulling production hikes that would begin in August,...
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RETAIL WORKERS QUITTING IN DROVES
In April, about 649,000 retail employees quit their jobs, the U.S. labor department reported, the largest one-month exodus since the department began keeping records more than 20 years ago. Stores’ ex-workers are finding higher pay and better benefits at insurance agencies, fitness centers, government offices, and even marijuana dispensaries, Business Insider reported; others are returning...
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BLACKSTONE EXTENDS REACH INTO HOUSING MARKET
Blackstone, the world’s richest asset management company, has agreed to pay $6 billion to buy Home Partners of America, a company that owns about 17,000 rental houses across the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported. Blackstone entered the rental housing business after the Great Recession, forming Invitation Homes as a subsidiary that bought tens of...
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MEDIAN U.S. HOME PRICE SETS ANOTHER RECORD
The median price of a single-family home in the U.S. reached a record $350,000 in May, rising from the previous record of $341,600, set the month before, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported. Prices have increased 24 percent in the last 12 months, the fastest year-on-year gain since 1999 when the NAR began keeping...
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U.S. BUMPING UP AGAINST DEBT LIMIT, YELLIN WARNS
U.S. government spending is about to collide with the Congressionally-mandated limit on the national debt and the treasury will no longer be able to pay the country’s bills some time in August unless legislators raise the limit before their August recess, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin warned in testimony before Congress on 23 June. Because lingering...
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FED OFFICIALS SEND MIXED SIGNALS ON POLICY SHIFT
Officials of the U.S. Federal Reserve aired their differing views last week about when the Fed should raise interest rates or cut back its $120-billion-a-month bond-buying program. The U.S. Federal Reserve will need to raise interest rates late in 2022, not in 2023 as bank officials determined at their meeting earlier this month, Raphael Bostic,...
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INFLATION LIKELY TO STAY STRONG AS RECOVERY SLOWS, BOA SAYS
The U.S. economic recovery has peaked and, beginning in July, will moderate as shortages and inflation curb consumer spending, Bank of America (BOA) said in an 18 June research note. The GDP expanded 11 percent in this year’s second quarter, will grow by 9 percent in the third quarter, and 5 percent in the fourth,...
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CORE PRICES NOTCH BIGGEST GAIN IN 30 YEARS
In May, the Core Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, which the U.S. Federal Reserve views as the most reliable gauge of inflation, shot up 3.4 percent compared to a year earlier, the U.S. commerce department reported. This represents the biggest 12-month increase since April 1992, according to CNBC. Separately, the department reported that also in...
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CONSUMER SPENDING STRONG
Consumer spending on goods in May rose 20 percent from February 2020’s amount, with spending on services only 1 percent below pre-shutdown levels. With inflation on the rise, overall spending maintained April’s volume, when consumers paid 0.9 percent more for goods and services than in March. Spending on recreation grew 3.5 percent last month, the...