Tag: feb 22 2022

Major U.S. producers of fracked oil and natural gas are investing only enough to keep production at current levels, despite global benchmark Brent crude oil prices briefly breaking through $100 a barrel on 16 February, its highest in almost eight years. Three leading U.S. fracking producers—Continental Resources, Devon Energy, and Pioneer Natural Resources—all reported 2021’s...

U.S. coal prices have shot from just above $80 a ton when 2021 began to more than $230 now as the world’s post-COVID energy demand has strained producers of all kinds of fuel to keep up. Last year saw the first increase in America’s coal production since 2014.  Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal...

The average home value has reached $1 million in 481 U.S. cities, double the number of locales in 2017, according to data from the online real estate brokerage Zillow. In 2021, 146 cities reached that mark. “The geography of wealth in the U.S. has begun to shift, as 2021 was the first year for both...

Apartment buildings are the best-performing real estate investment this year, as we reported in “Commercial Real Estate Investments Hit Record Level. Read Between the Lines” (1 Feb 2021), and investors are panning for gold in the hottest U.S. real estate patch—the Sunbelt. Landlords are following migration patterns, as aging Baby Boomers go south and businesses...

Sales of existing U.S. homes rose 6.7 percent in January from December, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported, as buyers rushed to lock in low mortgage interest rates before the U.S. Federal Reserve boosts its key lending rate next month. Homes are still selling within days of being listed, with more homes being bought...

At the end of December, 61 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck, a LendingClub survey found, slightly less than the high of 65 percent reported in 2020. We reported the financial straits of so many U.S. households in “Paycheck to Paycheck: The American Way” (29 Jun 2021). Although workers’ pay rose 4.7 percent...

After sliding 2.8 percent in December, consumer retail spending bounced up 3.8 percent in January to a record $649.8 billion, despite a 40-year record inflation rate, as the Omicron virus began to ebb, the U.S. census bureau reported. It was the sharpest monthly jump since March 2021, when households began receiving federal stimulus checks. The...

U.S. State claims for unemployment benefits bumped up by 23,000 in the most recent week to 248,000, disappointing economists polled by Reuters, who had forecast 219,000 new applications. New claims had been decreasing since mid-January as reports of new Omicron cases declined, plummeting from 700,000 a day then to under 145,000 in the most recent...