Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

The U.S. labor market grew by 431,000 jobs last month as higher wages and rising prices drew more people back to work. March marked the 11th consecutive month of job gains of more than 400,000, the longest such run since 1939, according to the U.S. labor department. Retail, restaurants, and manufacturing all showed strong hiring....

The U.S. average interest rate on a fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage reached 4.67 percent last week, the highest rate since December 2018, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation reported. The rate stood at 3.22 percent at the beginning of this year and now is closing in on 5 percent, a rate not seen since 2017. Higher...

U.S. workers’ pay grew 0.4 percent in March, a gain over February’s feeble 0.1 percent rise, but still lower than the monthly 0.5-percent climb wages experienced over the preceding six months, The Wall Street Journal reported. Wages overall were up 5.6 percent year on year last month, while U.S. inflation ran at an annual rate...

About 20 percent of U.S. workers—roughly one in five—run out of money between paychecks, up from 15 percent a year ago, a February survey of 3,000 adults by Salary Finance found. Among respondents, 25 percent said they find it harder to afford necessary expenses and a third are unable to save any money. Inflation is...

Corporations have authorized a record $319 billion in stock repurchases as of 28 March, compared to $267 billion for the same period last year, Goldman Sachs reported. This surpasses the previous record of $234.5 billion in stock buybacks, set in last year’s third quarter, as we reported in “Corporate Stock Buybacks Set Record” (21 Dec...

In this year’s first quarter, commodity prices soared on relentless inflation worsened by the Ukraine war and Western sanctions. The S&P GSCI, which monitors prices across an array of commodities, shot up 29 percent over the past three months, its best quarter since 1990. The U.S. oil price has gained 33 percent this year. Globally,...

Despite the late March rally in yields, bonds notched their worst quarterly performance since the 1980s, due to inflation and growing certainty that the Fed will boost interest rates by a half-point at its meeting in May.  The Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, which holds U.S. treasury bonds, high-grade corporate bonds, and mortgage-backed securities, lost...

LAST WEEK: U.S. equity markets rose last week after the major U.S. stock indexes turned in their worst quarterly performance since the COVID War began over two years ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the week by adding 0.4 percent and the NASDAQ 0.3 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index also gained 0.3...

Let’s be stupid. Let’s play politics. Let’s play American politics. Look at the nation’s glorious track record. Politicians from both parties started and lost scores of war across the planet over the past 75 years that cost trillions, killed millions and destroyed nations. As far as education, America spends a lot to be stupid. According...