Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

With the flow of free government money ending and inflation rising, U.S. consumer spending edged down 0.6 percent in December from November, the first monthly decline since February 2021, the U.S. commerce department reported. With the fear of Omicron spending and people afraid to go out, plus a 7-percent inflation rate that set a 40-year...

The U.S. economy grew 6.9 percent in last year’s fourth quarter compared to the same period a year earlier, the strongest quarter in more than a year and far ahead of analysts’ predictions, which averaged 5.5 percent. The growth rate tripled the previous quarter’s pace of 2.3 percent. The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCE),...

Salaries and wages grew by 4 percent in 2021, their greatest yearly gain since 2001, the U.S. labor department reported, as employers competed for scarce workers during the Great Resignation. Pay is increasing across the economy, from restaurants boosting wages to, or above, $15 an hour and investment banks paying six figures to hire financial...

The U.S. municipal bond market has seen its worst beginning to a new year since 2011, with the S&P Municipal Bond Index losing 1.1 percent in the first 20 days of this year. Muni bond funds took in $830 million in new investment this year through 19 January, compared to $6.1 billion for the same...

Every trading day during January, individual investors put more money into U.S. stocks than they extracted, according to data service VandaTrack, with new investments exceeding 2021’s average on all but two of the days. Individuals are continuing to buy even as the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has declined more than 9 percent from its...

The U.S. Federal Reserve has all but promised to begin raising interest rates next month as inflation raged at 7 percent, a 40-year high, in December and as the Fed is ready to end its $120-billion monthly bond  purchases that has propped up the U.S. economy and equity markets since March 2020. At a 26...

The recent turmoil in U.S. equity markets, including one of the most dramatic sell-offs since the onset of the COVID War, has been sparked by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s plan to raise interest rates as soon as next month. Clearly, it is not rocket science: The higher interest rates rise and the cheap money stops...

While the billionaires have gotten trillions of dollars richer, the average Americans’ view of their economic future is the darkest since November 2011. That’s a low that is even worse than in the early days of the COVID War, according to the University of Michigan’s monthly survey of people’s economic outlook. The index fell to...

STOCKS CAP WILD WEEK WITH A GAIN, AND KEEP RISING U.S. equity markets gyrated through last week but managed to close the stretch with a gain for two of the three indexes, ending a three-week downturn. The late Friday rally was fueled by strong earnings reports by major companies. The biggest of the market pushers...