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...
Tag: feb 22 2022
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CLIMATE CHANGE? FORGET ABOUT IT: U.S. COAL PRICES HIT CENTURY HIGH
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...
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MILLION-DOLLAR HOMES NOW THE “AVERAGE”
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...
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APARTMENT INVESTORS HEAD SOUTH
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...
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HOUSING MARKET: SALES UP, FEWER HOMES FOR SALE
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...
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SLAVELANDIA: 61 PERCENT OF AMERICANS LIVING PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK
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...
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SEQUOIA CAPITAL DEVOTES UP TO $600 MILLION TO CRYPTO
Sequoia Capital, the $80-billion U.S. private equity firm, will put $500 to $600 million into a new fund that will invest in crypto tokens on third-party exchanges, the company announced. Sequoia previously had invested in DeSo, a crypto social media start-up and Filecoin, a data storage network. “The area in crypto where we have the...
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EL SALVADOR BECOMES WORLD’S FIRST NATIONAL BITCOIN EXPERIMENT
After legalizing Bitcoin as legal tender last September, El Salvador, under self-described “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele, has become an experiment in Bitcoin’s power to play a role in national economics, perhaps opening new venues for borrowing and using profits from Bitcoin mining to fund new social spending. Bukele’s government has spent $180 million setting...
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CONSUMER SPENDING REBOUNDS. WHAT’S NEXT?
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...
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JOBLESS RISING. ECONOMY SINKING?
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...