Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

U.S. households paying the nation’s median monthly rent of $1,179 in August needed 30.3 percent of their incomes to cover the cost, up from 29.4 percent a year earlier, according to real estate website Zillow after it studied data from 50 of the nation’s biggest cities. Housing is affordable when rent absorbs no more than...

Go back to the Trump years, when the word on The Street, nearly every time stock prices moved lower, they would blame it on the “Trade War,” which we kept noting had zero to do with the market moves because it was all talk and no action.  Bingo! The U.S. trade deficit reached $80.9 billion...

The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent in October as the economy added 604,000 new private-sector jobs, bringing the net monthly gain to 531,000, far beyond analysts’ expectations. The two previous months’ totals were revised upward, adding another 235,000 net new jobs. The unemployment rate has dropped from 5.9 percent to 4.6 in five...

Bond traders largely had accepted central banks’ assurances that high inflation is “temporary” or “transitory” and bought and sold bonds at prices and yields reflecting that view. However, with this autumn’s spike in energy prices, combined with unrelieved supply-line clogs, bond markets are setting yields higher in the expectation the U.S. Federal Reserve will be...

The U.S. Federal Reserve has announced plans to begin closing down its program, begun in March 2020, of buying $80 billion a month in U.S. bonds and $40 billion in mortgage bonds, the Fed’s Open Market Committee announced last week. The Fed will cut purchases by $15 billion in each of November and December, the...

STOCKS BOOM BOOMING Despite U.S. Fed fears that a slowdown of economic growth in China—which is facing a high-stakes real estate risk—could rattle the global economy, to fears that Germany, Europe’s economic engine is stalling… equities across the globe keep rising higher.  “Global Economic Recovery is Facing Big Test,” headlined yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal. ...

Hertz, the rental car company that emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June with $6 billion in capital, has agreed to buy 100,000 Tesla Model 3 all-electric sedans by the end of 2022, paying about $4.2 billion for the lot. Hertz will make Teslas available for rent this year in Atlanta, Austin, Nashville, New Orleans,...

Investors snapped up commercial properties at a record pace during the third quarter, The Wall Street Journal reported, especially apartment buildings, facilities equipped as life-science labs, and warehouses that can or do serve as distribution centers for e-commerce. Sales totaled a record $193 billion, 19 percent more than in the same period in 2019, according...

U.S. sales of tobacco products edged up 0.4 percent last year, the first annual increase in two decades, according to a report by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.  Americans stuck at home with little to do and few opportunities to travel or socialize smoked more, CEO Billy Gifford of cigarette-maker Altria Group, formerly Philip Morris,...

As mortgage interest rates edged up in September, the number of signed contracts for home purchases unexpectedly dipped 2.3 percent from August, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported, and fell 8 percent from the number a year earlier. Mortgage interest rates remained below 3 percent from July through early September, but rose to an...