Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

New claims for unemployment benefits fell to 214,000 in the week ending 12 March, 15,000 less than the week before, the U.S. labor department reported. The four-week moving average dropped from 231,750 to 223,000. Continuing claims moved down from 1.49 million to 1.41 million in the most recent week tallied. The number of open jobs...

Last month, American consumers kept on spending more, but at a slower rate of increase than in January. Retail sales grew just 0.3 percent in February, compared to January’s surprising 4.9 percent, the U.S. commerce department reported. Still, restaurant and retail sales combined to set a monthly record of $658.1 billion in February, according to...

Nickel traders at the London Metal Exchange accused the exchange of favoring its giant customers and taking extraordinary steps to protect top clients like a Chinese tycoon and JPMorgan after there was a short squeeze on nickel. Clifford Asness, the founder of AQR Capital Management, took to Twitter on 10 March to accuse the exchange...

The world’s market for nickel is in chaos, leaving manufacturers that need to search out new sources. Supplies from Russia, which historically have provided more than 11 percent of the metal to manufacturers around the world, have not been banned but are in jeopardy because of its Ukraine war. Earlier this month, a foul-up in...

Global commodity markets bogged down last week as fears of geopolitical risk, exchange glitches, the risk of huge margin calls, caps on credit, and general price uncertainty sent a growing number of traders to the sidelines, taking markets’ liquidity with them. “Liquidity” is a measure of a market’s responsiveness and fairness. It is determined by...

The rich get richer, the Bigs get bigger, and the equities markets keep rising higher as the money pumping schemes keep heating up. During the first two months of this year, corporations listed in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index have announced plans to repurchase $238 billion worth of their stock, a record for...

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee voted 8 to 1 on 16 March to raise its key interest rate by a quarter-point.  Rates will now range from 0.25 to 0.50 percent. The lone dissenter was James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, who wanted rates hiked by a half-point. “I...

Think about it! What’s the big headline making the news today? “BIDEN: AMERICA WILL LEAD NEW WORLD ORDER.” In his speech, President Joe Biden declared, “Now is the time where things are shifting. There’s going to be a new world order out there and we’ve got to lead it.”  “Lead it?” Where?  Down the crapper!...

U.S. EQUITY MARKETS PERK UP, DELIVER BEST WEEK IN 17 MONTHS All three major U.S. stock indexes turned solidly positive last week, ending several weeks of slumping prices and turning in their best performance since the week ending 6 November, 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average grew by 5.5 percent over the week, the NASDAQ...

Thirty-five percent of white-collar workers would refuse to even consider a job that forbids them to work at home at least some of the time, a recent poll by Rippling, a human resources software firm, found. Only one worker in 15 expects to return to the office full-time, the poll discovered. However, a plurality prefer...