Flush with cash after a strong earnings season and confident in the economy’s upward arc, corporations are preparing to resume buying their own stocks, a project that began in earnest after Republicans passed 2017’s corporate tax cut but were paused during the economic shutdown. U.S. companies across a broad spectrum of industries announced buybacks worth...
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MORTGAGE MARKET POISED TO SLOW, INSIDERS SAY
Home buyers are no less eager to buy houses but the mortgage industry likely will be less able to accommodate them, analysts say. Mortgage interest rates are creeping up, leaving some prospective buyers now unable to qualify for loans even though they might have earlier this year. For example, today’s interest rates averaging around 2.97...
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ALMOST 25% OF U.S. ADULTS WORSE OFF IN 2020
Nearly one-quarter of U.S. adults lost ground financially in 2020, the largest proportion since the annual survey began in 2014, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s report, “The Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2020,” released 17 May. About 45 percent of workers who had been laid off were unable to meet their expenses in...
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APRIL RETAIL SALES SUSTAIN MARCH’S GAIN
After increasing 10.7 percent in March from February, retail sales were flat in April, holding March’s gains, although just missing the 0.8-percent nudge that economists had expected but still lofting 43 percent above those in April 2020, according to data firm Affinity Solutions. Sales for the month in bars and restaurants more than doubled over...
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EMPLOYERS DESPERATE FOR HOURLY WORKERS
Amazon has announced plans to hire another 75,000 workers and will pay $1,000 signing bonuses in some locales. McDonald’s wants 10,000 new wage-earners in its company-owned restaurants and will raise pay by an average of 10 percent for the 36,500 workers already there. Olive Garden also has announced a more generous pay scale. Applebee’s, IHOP,...
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UNEMPLOYMENT CONTINUES TO DWINDLE
New claims for unemployment benefits fell to 473,000 in the most recent week, sliding from the adjusted 507,000 the week before, the U.S. Labor Department reported. Fewer people are now jobless than at any time since the economic shutdown was imposed last March, the Wall Street Journal noted. The four-week moving average of new jobless...
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IPOs FALLING FROM FAVOR
Investors’ appetite for IPOs, seemingly insatiable earlier this year, has shrunk after the share prices of several newly-public companies quickly sank below their offering price. Honest Co. entered the market at $16, shot up to $23 on its first trading day, but sagged to $14.90 last week before closing 14 May at $15.97. Dating app...
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BLOCKCHAIN BATTLES
DRUG GANGS POUR ACROSS SOUTHERN BORDER WHILE U.S. GOES AFTER BINANCE. The stock market sinking 600 points early last week off horrible inflation numbers and the Colonial Pipeline fiasco needed something to turn it around. Cue a crackdown on Binance specifically and decentralized cryptos more generally. U.S authorities announced an investigation into supposed rampant drug-related...
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PRAGERU CANCELED BY JW PLAYER VIDEO SERVICE
PragerU, an assiduously polite organization that puts out effective primers on basic conservative principles and thought, has been banned by another tech company. This time, it’s JW Player, which had been providing video services for the PragerU website. According to a 14 May 14 PragerU statement: “Just as our contract was coming up for renewal,...
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BUYING AMERICA’S NEWSROOMS
“Report For America,” an organization that subsidizes the hiring of selected reporters at regional and local newspaper outlets, recently announced an expanded initiative. A new “Report For The World” program has been launched to place journalists in newsrooms in Africa and other nations. Since 2017, Facebook and Google, among other left-leaning funders, have used “Report...