By Bradley J. Steiner, American Combato A recent news story reported that a woman producing a handgun and leveling it at another woman over a dispute regarding—of all stupid things—the armed woman’s alleged refusal to apologize to the other woman’s 15 year old daughter after bumping into her! Look, if you bump into someone (or...
Tag: aug 10 2021
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CHINA’S GDP SWELLS 12.7 PERCENT IN 2021’S FIRST SIX MONTHS
After expanding 18.3 percent in this year’s first quarter and 7.9 percent in the second, China’s economy posted a cumulative 12.7-percent growth during the first half of this year to 53.2 trillion yuan, the National Bureau of Statistics reported, the equivalent of about $8.2 trillion. After adding 2.3 percent in 2020, the bureau calculates the...
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GERMANY’S FACTORY OUTPUT FALLS FOR THIRD STRAIGHT MONTH
Germany’s manufacturing economy turned out 1.3 percent less value in June than in May, bringing its three-month slide to production levels 6.8 percent smaller than in February 2020, the country’s statistics agency reported. Materials shortages and kinks in supply chains caused the drop, the agency said. Short of computer chips, Germany’s vehicle makers shrank output...
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TOURISTS’ ABSENCE CRIPPLES EMERGING MARKET ECONOMIES
For the second consecutive summer, emerging nations are facing an absence of the tourists that have been the lifeblood of their economies, which already are burdened by debt and drained by the cost of fighting the COVID War, the Financial Times reported. In January through May, international arrivals were 85 percent fewer than 2019’s 540...
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PENN BUYS SCORE MEDIA FOR $2 BILLION
Penn National Gaming, which operates 43 casinos and racetracks in 20 U.S. states, has agreed to buy Score Media & Gaming for $2 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. Score Media’s Score app sends scores, sports news, and betting information to its subscribers. Score had about 3.7 million active users in May, the WSJ said....
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APOLLO BUYS PART OF LUMEN TECHNOLOGIES
Private equity firm Apollo Global Management will buy a portion of Lumen Technologies’ broadband and telephone infrastructure for $7.5 billion and assume $1.4 billion of Lumen’s debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. The transaction covers about 5 million Lumen residential and business customers, mostly in the U.S. Midwest and Southeast. Around the purchased networks, Apollo...
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MALL OWNERS DUMPING MARGINAL SHOPPING CENTERS
Last year’s economic crisis has divided the world of shopping malls in two. So-called “Class A” malls, offering luxury shops and top-tier restaurants to well-off households that held their jobs through 2021, have survived more or less intact and are still able to charge premium rents. In contrast, owners of Class B and C malls,...
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BIDEN PUSHES 50-PERCENT EV PRODUCTION BY 2030
By 2030, half of all passenger vehicles produced in the U.S. will be all-electric, president Joe Biden declared, signing an executive order to that effect on 5 August. Leaders of the United Auto Workers, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Stellantis—the Dutch auto company that is the latest owner of Fiat-Chrysler—were on hand at Biden’s...
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AIRLINES DOWN ON TRAVEL’S RETURN
Airlines have predicted that business travel will return this fall, but now the companies may be wondering if their optimism is premature. Business travelers slowly have been returning to the road, with business bookings reaching 40 percent of pre-crisis levels, the Wall Street Journal reported. (See “Business Travel Rebound?,” Trends Journal, 8 June, 2021.) American...
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RESIDENTIAL RENTAL RATES SKYROCKETING
Rents for houses and apartments have shot up an average of 10 percent since July 2020, with the median rate reaching $1,244, a 9.4-percent increase since March 2020, just before the COVID War began, according to the website Apartment List. Share prices of companies owning rental homes and flats have risen in tandem. FTSE’s Nareit...