Tag: Apr 13 2021

Consumer confidence bounced from 90.4 in February to 109.7 in March in the Conference Board’s monthly index of consumer sentiment. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal had expected a reading of only 96.8. The index charted 132.4 in February 2020 on the cusp of the pandemic. The confidence index measures shoppers’...

The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) measurement of the U.S. economy’s service sector strength shot to a record 63.7 in March from 55.3 in February, the institute reported, and it beat expectations of all economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Readings above 50 signal expansion. All 18 categories of services ISM monitors gained in March. The figure...

During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden proposed that any corporation with an income of $100 million or more pay a minimum 15-percent tax. In his $2.3-trillion infrastructure plan, Biden has raised that threshold to $2 billion and would allow companies to take deductions for research and development, green energy, and affordable housing. That higher threshold...

President Biden proposes to spend $2.3 trillion to refurbish U.S. infrastructure, which he defines to include care for children and the elderly and affordable housing, among an expanded concept of economic infrastructure detailed in his plan. The plan would spend the money over eight years and be paid for over 15 years by raising corporations’...

Last Wednesday, John Coates, acting director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Corporation Finance Division, said there are “significant and yet undiscovered issues” related to special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, that are “not going to stop them… but they are… as yet incompletely worked through mechanisms.” SPACs are shell companies that issue stock...