Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

The Fed is lagging in its mission to tamp down an “exceptionally high” rate of inflation and is likely to take more aggressive action at its next meeting, James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, told a group of reporters on 7 April. Bullard, a voting member of the U.S. Federal...

Last month, gold exchange-traded products (ETPs) took in a record $11.3 billion, according to Blackrock, as investors fled European equities while Russia’s Ukraine war raged on (see related story in this issue). Investments grew fivefold from February’s amount, eclipsing July 2020’s record monthly inflow of $9.4 billion. The surge drove gold’s price to $1,947 on...

LAST WEEK: U.S. stocks and bonds gave ground. U.S. equity markets slumped last week amid continuing inflation, uncertainty over the impact of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s looming rise in interest rates, and fallout from the war in Ukraine. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.3 percent, the NASDAQ sank 3.9 percent, and the Standard &...

How low can we go? This isn’t ancient history. Go back to Chinese Lunar New Year 2020: The Year of the Rat In January, when the coronavirus was launched in the city of Wuhan, Beijing locked the city down, and others, to beat the virus. In lockstep, Italy picked up the sword to defeat the...

Although the state of New York budgeted $100 million to help nonprofit organizations convert empty New York City hotels into affordable housing, legislators have yet to lift regulations that block the conversions and the funds remain largely unspent, Bloomberg reported. Two nonprofits have expressed interest in converting the spaces. However, they have yet to file...

Since the beginning of the COVID War, we have predicted the collapse of New York City’s commuter economy: most employees working at home will never return to the office full-time, robbing shops and businesses of the customers they need to survive and thus shrinking city tax revenues. Now someone has calculated the dollar value of...

While private equity giants buy portfolios of warehouses and entire housing developments to rent out, a new breed of real estate investor is putting money into buildings leased to gas stations, doctors’ offices, and neighborhood grocery stores, The Wall Street Journal found. Since mid-2020, a growing number of investment funds have been buying properties occupied...

To aid Europe as it seeks to end its dependence on Russian natural gas, the U.S. is maximizing its shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) across the Atlantic, a policy decision that has tightened gas supplies at home and kept prices high. The amount of gas stored in the U.S. is now 17 percent below...

President Joe Biden will invoke the Defense Production Act to increase production of cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, nickel, and other key materials needed for electric vehicles and grid-scale batteries in an attempt to ease U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers and, longer-term, on oil imports. The law, when activated by presidential order, gives the government the...

U.S. consumer spending grew by 0.2 percent in February, sharply slower than the 2.7-percent gain in January, the U.S. commerce department reported. Spending on services, such as restaurant meals, expanded by 0.9 percent while the purchase of goods slipped 1 percent. Vehicle purchases were off 4 percent, due largely to the ongoing shortage of computer...