Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

Major U.S. investment banks are taking sharp losses on bond issues agreed to before the U.S. Federal Reserve began raising interest rates, the Financial Times reported. When banks structure bond issues, they specify the maximum interest rate the bonds will pay, with a little wiggle room included—usually around 5 percent—in case markets move. However, since...

Cargo containers arriving on ships at U.S. ports can sit for weeks before moving inland because railroads are overwhelmed by the sheer number of steel boxes they must manage, The Wall Street Journal reported. About 29,000 containers are stacked in yards at the Los Angeles port waiting for trains to take them away, triple the...

During the week ending 24 June, the average U.S. interest rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage reached 5.81 percent, another in a series of 13-year high marks. The rate was the highest since November 2008, The Wall Street Journal said. The rate moved up from 5.78 percent the week ending 17 June and 5.23 percent...

More members of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s rate-setting Open Market Committee are ready to raise the key federal funds interest rate another three-quarters of a point at the group’s meeting next month, the Financial Times reported. Michelle Bowman, a member of the Fed’s board of governors, voiced support for the bump “based on current inflation...

A U.S. recession is “not our intended outcome at all but it’s certainly a possibility,” U.S. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said in testimony before the Senate banking committee on 22 June. The nation’s economy is “very strong,” he told lawmakers, but warned that new inflation surprises “could be in store.” Containing inflation, running at...

It’s all in the numbers.  Life on Earth is getting more miserable by the day.  A Gallup poll released today shows that thanks to the dictators who locked down the world to fight the COVID War, the “World is Unhappier, More Stressed Out Than Ever.”  Their findings show that:  “Emotionally, the second year of the...

For years, private equity firms have been buying single-family houses to rent out at premium prices, a trend that accelerated during the COVID War as the firms broadened their portfolios to include apartment buildings and even student housing. As home prices have skyrocketed, investment companies have swooped in, offering cash on the spot to sellers...

The high cost of houses and apartment rents has pushed more people with low incomes into mobile home parks, where surging demand is driving up rents in what has become the last housing refuge for those of modest means.  About 6 percent of U.S. residences are so-called “manufactured homes,” housing roughly 20 million Americans, according...

While the mainstream media ignored our forecast, and President Joe Biden, as we reported extensively, told the American people and the world that the sanctions he and NATO imposed on Moscow would hurt Putin and not We the People, they are now changing their tune. The economic sanctions that Western allies imposed on Russia after...

Consumers spent 0.3 percent less in May on retail and food-service purchases than in April, confounding analysts’ prediction of a 0.1-percent gain and notching the first monthly decline in consumer spending this year. April’s spending edged up 0.7 percent, month on month. May sales actually rose 0.5 percent when vehicle purchases were excluded from the...