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In search of higher yields, private equity firms are loaning money, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, to ambitious businesses that are not turning a profit but have some prospect of doing so in the future. Companies turn to these new forms of bonded loans, known as “asset-backed securitizations” (ABS) to raise money without issuing...

Seeking to fill a $15-billion budget hole dug by the pandemic and resulting economic shutdown, New York’s state legislature approved a $212-billion budget that raises corporate and income taxes on the state’s most affluent earners. The budget adds funding for schools, arts groups, small business aid, renewable energy, and tenants behind on their rent. It...

U.S. HOUSING MARKET REMAINS AT FEVER PITCH. For the first time, the average U.S. home is selling above its list price, data firm Redfin reported. In Austin, Texas, possibly the liveliest real estate market in the country, the average sale fetches 107 percent of the asking price, the company said. Housing prices will rise another...

The Donald Trump-alleged trade war with China and other nations was a factual failure.  According to the Commerce Department, the U.S. trade deficit surged to a record high in February, ballooning another 4.8 percent to a record $711 billion as the cheap money fiscal stimulus spiked the fastest economic growth in some 40 years.  Meanwhile,...

The airline industry is not expected to recover its pre-pandemic passenger loads until at least 2023, but airlines hope that figure might need to be revised. Spring bookings on American Airlines have reached 90 percent of their pre-pandemic volumes, and its domestic flights already are 80 percent full, the airline stated in a recent regulatory...

At their meeting on 16 and 17 March, officials of the U.S. Federal Reserve expressed confidence in an increasingly strong U.S. economic recovery and said they expect to keep interest rates near zero through 2023, barring unexpected jolts to the economy. The group also showed no interest in curtailing the central bank’s bond purchase program,...

The U.S. Dollar Index, which gauges the dollar’s value against six other major currencies, climbed 3.6 percent in this year’s first quarter, its best stretch since 2018, the Financial Times reported. The buck’s three-month performance seemed to contradict forecasts by the majority of analysts who predicted the dollar would lose about 3 percent this year...

Consumer confidence bounced from 90.4 in February to 109.7 in March in the Conference Board’s monthly index of consumer sentiment. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal had expected a reading of only 96.8. The index charted 132.4 in February 2020 on the cusp of the pandemic. The confidence index measures shoppers’...

The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) measurement of the U.S. economy’s service sector strength shot to a record 63.7 in March from 55.3 in February, the institute reported, and it beat expectations of all economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Readings above 50 signal expansion. All 18 categories of services ISM monitors gained in March. The figure...

During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden proposed that any corporation with an income of $100 million or more pay a minimum 15-percent tax. In his $2.3-trillion infrastructure plan, Biden has raised that threshold to $2 billion and would allow companies to take deductions for research and development, green energy, and affordable housing. That higher threshold...