Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

Each week, we report instances where the money junky hedge funds, private equity groups and the already big company swallows another piece of the global economy. Here are some of what the BIGS gobbling up last week…. CME GROUP OFFERS $16 BILLION FOR CBOE. CME Group, the world’s largest operator of futures exchanges, has offered...

MCR Hotels, the fourth-largest U.S. hotel chain with about 20,000 rooms, according to Hotel Business magazine, is testing a la carte pricing for services at a dozen of its inns. For example, guests are charged $20 for an early check-in or late checkout; guests also pay a fee to use the hotels’ fitness centers or...

Ford is testing a new way of selling cars. In the past, auto makers have cranked out cars with random colors, trim packages, and drivetrain options, then set them on dealers lots’ where customers could choose among them. Now Ford will emphasize making a car to each customer’s custom order, placed online, and delivering it...

For owners of its Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality (VR) headsets, Facebook has introduced Horizon Workrooms, a program that creates VR conference rooms where Oculus owners can meet, discuss, draft, and work together. A person can enter the room with a cartoon avatar and take a seat at a virtual conference table. Interactive whiteboards mounted...

Chevrolet has recalled all Bolts, its all-electric car, to fix battery problems that could cause fires, the company said. Last year, the company recalled its 69,000 older Bolts after five reports of fires; the company then recalled the same cars again to fix a battery defect that could ignite fires. After spending $800 million on...

Wall Street denied it and mainstream media refused to publish our trend forecasts of a sinking commercial real estate sector that we made back in March 2020 when the COVID War was heating up.  With cities locked down, people working from home, and office occupancy rates plummeting, we had forecast that commercial real estate would...

Americans filed papers to start 4.3 million businesses in 2020, the U.S. census bureau reported, 24 percent more than in 2019 and the most in a single year during the 15 years that the agency has tracked the statistic, according to The New York Times. The volume of applications is still rising this year, the...

Despite consumers’ abrupt loss of confidence in the U.S. economy’s future (see “Consumer Sentiment Tanks,” Trends Journal, 17 August 2021), Lowe’s, Target, and Walmart all raised their sales outlook for the rest of the year after earnings topped expectations in this year’s second quarter. Overall retail sales dipped 1.1 percent in July compared to June,...

The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits sank to 348,000 in the most recent reporting week, the U.S. labor department announced. The figure, the fourth consecutive weekly decline and the lowest since 14 March, 2020, beat the 363,000 forecast by economists that Bloomberg had surveyed. Continuing claims numbered 2.82 million, barely...

Later this year, the U.S. Federal Reserve will begin to curtail its $120-billion monthly purchases of government and mortgage-backed bonds, according to minutes of the Fed’s Open Market Committee on 27 and 28 July. “Most participants noted that, provided the economy were to evolve broadly as they anticipated, they judged that it could be appropriate...