Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

About 45 percent of the 3,597 new store openings retail chains announced so far this year will be additions to the Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar chains, according to an analysis by Coresight Research. Economic damage from the COVID War has hit low and middle-level wage workers hard, thus accelerating the long-term of...

The American public – 72 percent of which are overweight and 40 percent obese – has ratcheted up their taste for corporate food, and their hunger for it has driven up the prices of chicken wings, nuggets, and sandwiches… as chicken supplies go down.  Restaurant closures during the economic shutdown left freezers full of unsold...

Prices for corn, soybeans, and wheat – crops that are the foundation of much of the world’s diet – have reached levels not seen since 2013, fueled in part by speculators expecting prices to rise even more, some analysts say. Wheat has passed its February 2013 high and closed 7 May at $7.73 a bushel...

Investors and analysts are growing more worried about inflation, but officials at the U.S. Federal Reserve – the agency charged with keeping inflation controlled – are not sharing those anxieties and instead continue to insist that any sudden rise in prices will be small and short-lived. Some Fed officers even seem to welcome what inflation...

The economy is rebounding as consumers express pent-up demand, but suppliers are unable to respond as quickly. As a result, consumer prices shot up 2.6 percent in March, the biggest monthly jump since August 2018 and notably higher than the U.S. Federal Reserve’s 2-percent benchmark. A broad array of items are in short supply, driving...

What we have been warning – and what people who can think for themselves clearly understand – is that the economy was destroyed by the COVID War lockdown, and it has been artificially pumped up with heavy doses of monetary methadone injected into the system by Washington and the Fed. Now, finally, the U.S. Federal...

Good News: Last Thursday, new claims for unemployment benefits fell to 498,000 during the week ending 6 May, the fourth consecutive weekly decline, the fourth week of claims below 600,000, and the lowest number since the pandemic began 14 months ago, the U.S. Labor Department reported. The figure beat the consensus estimate of 538,000 among...

Steel demand crashed during the COVID War. Now, as the world’s economy reopens, mills are unable to meet the sudden surge in demand. As a result, prices for both steel and steel company stocks have skyrocketed. The good news for U.S. steel users: all of the country’s pre-COVID War capacity is back online… but at...

After ending last week at new record highs, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 Index edged back down yesterday. The NASDAQ lost 2.5 percent on the day. The Dow and S&P 500 closed 7 May at their 24th and 26th record highs this year as the report of April’s feeble jobs market set...

CES, the world’s pre-eminent annual display of innovation in consumer electronics, will convene “in person” as customary in Las Vegas this January, the sponsoring Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has announced. The event’s physical restoration assumes that the successful U.S. COVID vaccination campaign will continue and the virus will be largely contained by then. More than...