Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

The weakness in Manhattan real estate prices and store vacancies that we have been reporting on in the Trends Journal over the past year have spread across the East River to Brooklyn. The dollar volume of real estate sales in Brooklyn last year dropped 30 percent from 2019, to $5.1 billion. The plunge was driven largely...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) told the World Economic Forum at Davos that it has revised downward its 2020 and 2021 growth forecast for the world’s economy, cutting this year’s outlook from 3.4 to 3.3 percent and next year’s from 3.6 to 3.4 percent. The glum forecast was mirrored by corporate executives attending the conference....

The weakness of Europe’s economy in January has surprised analysts, but it comes as no surprise to Trends Journal subscribers. IHS Markit’s Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for the region was stuck at 50.9 as the year began, unchanged from December. Observers had expected it to begin January at 51.2. The German economy’s strength early this...

More banks need bailouts. China’s lax banking regulations have led to decades of bad loans, corruption, and mismanagement. Now, according to UBS Research, more than 24 of the nation’s banks need $339 billion in rescue funding to have 12.5 percent of their at-risk portfolio balanced by cash – the global standard for safe practice. Although...

Concerns about U.S. vulnerability to cyber attacks is rising since the assassination of Iran’s general Qasem Soleimani and with good reason: according to a research paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a cyber attack on the nation’s five biggest banks could send the U.S. economy into turmoil. An attack that crippled banks’...

Since October, Chile has been rocked by public protests against conditions ranging from economic inequality and rising prices to plans to privatize pensions and public education. Economic policies begun in the 1990s created wealth but also drew millions of people into debt, with most of the new wealth flowing to richest 1 percent of the...

Argentina’s inflation rate ended 2019 at 53.8 percent, down from a peak of 84 percent during the year. It’s among the five countries with the world’s worst inflation pace. This month, bank deposits have been off their usual pace by about $40 million a day, compared to rising deposit rates in December. Worsening the tailspin...

Turkey Inflation crept up above 11 percent in December, but Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has forced the country’s central bank to cut its benchmark one-week repo rate from 12 to 11.25 percent. Analysts had expected a cut no more than half a point. This is the fifth consecutive cut since July 2019. Because the...

China has renewed construction projects under its Belt and Road Initiative, which is building ports, rail lines, and other infrastructure to connect its trading partners more firmly and easily to the Asian giant. During the first 11 months of 2019, China signed contracts worth $128 billion as part of the plan. Most of the money...

Germany’s GDP grew by a feeble 0.6 percent in 2019, its lowest rate since 2013. Global trade battles weakened exports, as did a general downturn in the world auto market. Domestic car sales slowed to recession rates, having a ripple effect throughout the industry’s national supply chain. What growth there was is being attributed to...