Loosening supply lines and U.S. consumers’ unrelenting demand for goods pushed November’s trade deficit in merchandise to $99 billion as holiday shopping intensified, especially for cell phones, clothing, and toys, The Wall Street Journal reported. The month’s overall deficit in goods and services combined was $80.2 billion. Manufacturers exported less, due to kinked shipping lines...
Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT
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U.S. MANUFACTURING BOUNCE-BACK COMING?
We had forecast this trend was coming, and here it is. Last month, General Motors said it is considering a $4-billion investment in new electric vehicle battery-making capacity in Michigan; and Toyota unveiled plans for a $1.3-billion EV battery plant in North Carolina that will employ 1,750 people. Georgia’s upstart America Knits factory, where 65...
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AMERICANS: HAPPY DAYS NOT HERE, AGAIN!
Cheer up, it’s Gloom Time. With Omicron fear spreading and with the COVID War still raging, just 21 percent of Americans say they are better off financially than they were a year ago, according to a Momentive survey conducted for The New York Times. A year ago, the same survey found 26 percent reporting improvement....
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DECEMBER JOB FREEFALL
The U.S. economy created 199,000 non-farm jobs in December, fewer than half of the 422,000 that Dow Jones had forecast. The most optimistic analysts had foreseen 453,000 new jobs. Also last month, the unemployment rate shrank to 3.9 percent, close to the 50-year low of 3.5 percent set in February 2020. Leisure and hospitality businesses...
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“THE BIG QUIT” SETS RECORD IN NOVEMBER
In November, 4.5 million U.S. workers chose to quit their jobs, almost 3 percent of the national labor force, according to the U.S. labor department. The figure set a monthly record, topping the record 4.2 million set the month before, for the two decades the department has been tracking the quit rate. As of 30...
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$100,000 INCOME, CHUMP CHANGE? CAN’T AFFORD “AMERICAN DREAM?”
A $100,000 annual household income, thought not long ago to be a ticket to the upper middle class, can no longer guarantee the “American Dream” of a single-family home in the suburbs, two cars in the garage, a child or two, and a college fund for the kids, according to a recent analysis by Business...
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MARKET OVERVIEW
U.S. MARKETS STUMBLED INTO THE NEW YEAR As we have detailed since the beginning of the COVID War, Wall Street’s spiking stock market was, and still is, a total disconnect from Main Street. Plain and simple: Equites were driven higher by the unprecedented infusions of cheap monetary methadone pumped into the system by the Bankster...
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DRIVERLESS CARS = DRIVERLESS FRAUD
Dan Ammann, who left the presidency of General Motors (GM) at the beginning of 2019 to steer Cruise, the corporation’s initiative in self-driving cars, has resigned from the company. GM had promised it would field a road-ready driverless car in 2019 but that did not happen. Since Ammann took charge at Cruise, enthusiasm for autonomous...
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RETAIL SALES CREEP UP IN NOVEMBER
Sales at stores, restaurants, and online retailers rose a modest 0.3 percent in November from October, plunging from October’s 1.8-percent jump. Sales at electronic stores slipped 4.6 percent and were down 1.2 percent at general merchandise stores. Online sales were flat, according to the U.S. labor department. Still, November’s number was 18.2 percent above that...
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LABOR MARKET’S STRENGTH PROVES FED POLICY WRONG, WSJ SAYS
As inflation reared early this year, the U.S. Federal Reserve bet that the labor market could run strong without pushing costs and prices higher for a prolonged period—a bet that has proven to be wrong, Wall Street Journal columnist Greg Yp wrote in a 17 December analysis. The Fed continued to insist that inflation would...