Tag: feb 16 2021

The U.S. budget deficit totaled a record $738 billion during the first four months of the federal government’s current fiscal year, an 89-percent rise against the same period a year earlier, the U.S. Treasury Department reported. Revenues reached $1.2 trillion for the period, also a record, while expenses soared 23 percent to a never-before-seen four-month...

“We are still very far from a strong labor market whose benefits are broadly shared,” Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, said in a 10 February speech to the Economic Club of New York. Powell pledged a “patiently accommodative” monetary policy for as long as needed, even as the jobs market grows stronger,...

New claims for unemployment benefits totaled 793,000 during the week of 8 February, only slightly less than the previous week’s 812,000. The new figure topped the estimate of 760,000 from economists surveyed by Dow Jones. New weekly claims for jobless benefits have topped 700,000 every week for 11 months. Continuing claims dropped by 145,000 to...

Yields on U.S. junk-rated bonds have fallen below 3 percent, making it cheap and easy for companies tilting toward insolvency to borrow money. Centene Corporation, a health insurance company, sold a $2.2-billion bond last week at an interest rate of 2.5 percent, saving it an estimated $40 million a year in interest payments. Last month,...