Tag: aug 18 2020

As we had forecast in March, there would be a great exodus of people leaving densely populated, expensive cites to “escape the virus” and rising crime rates. Around the world and across the nations, that trend has become reality. At one point last month, 13,117 apartments were listed for rent in Manhattan, more than double...

The Tribune Publishing Co. is taking a page from other corporations and assigning journalists from five newspapers to work from home, allowing the company to give up leased office space. The five newspapers are the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, MD; the Carroll County Times, MD; the Morning Call in Allentown, PA; the New York Daily...

The U.S.’s inability to control the spread of the COVID virus is hampering the economic recovery, said Eric Rosengren, chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, on 12 August. “Common-sense precautions, such as wearing masks… are much less costly than having to shut down whole sectors of the economy,” he said. “We must get...

Again, connoting the income disparity between the rich and middle class, big and small, companies listed on the Russell 2000 of small-cap publicly-traded companies collectively lost $1.1 billion in 2020’s second quarter, compared to $18 billion in profits a year earlier, reported FactSet, a data company. Goodyear Tire & Rubber lost $696 million in the...

As the rich have gotten richer, America, once the “Land of Opportunity” is seeing its middle class shrinking smaller. Long before the COVID Panic pumped trillions more wealth into the bank accounts of the wealthiest, income growth for Americans in their prime working years has narrowed from 27 percent to 8 percent from 2002 to...

In part as a result in response to July’s increase in consumer spending, the shortage of products, and supply chain disruptions, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.6 percent in July, equaling its rise in June and upsetting analysts’ forecast of a 0.3-percent hike. The rise was greater than June’s 0.2 percent and put consumer...

U.S. retail sales advanced 1.2 percent in July, the third consecutive monthly rise, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported. July sales were 1.7 percent above February’s, the month before the pandemic struck and the economy began to implode. Spending was heavy on appliances, electronics, health products, and restaurant meals. Last month, production at factories, mines,...

Without federal aid, state and local governments will lose about $500 billion in revenue over the next two years, lopping three points off the U.S. GDP, costing four million jobs, and hobbling any U.S. economic recovery, Moody’s Analytics concluded in a research report. And with less tax revenue coming in, there are forecasts states will...

The flood of federal stimulus and support dollars into the economy, combined with tax revenue lost as millions are jobless and businesses fail, has pushed the federal deficit to a record $2.8 trillion so far this fiscal year, which ends 30 September. The current year’s deficit is 224 percent greater than the $867 million logged...