Tag: jul 20 2021

Chipotle Mexican Grill, Denny’s, and Shake Shack are among the restaurants raising menu prices; Domino’s Pizza and Darden Restaurants, which owns nine chains including Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse, have shrunk the size of their discounts.  Burger King will offer consumers 3 percent less in discounts this year, the company has said. Restaurant prices swelled...

Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley reported strong second-quarter results as increased revenue from investment banking fees offset weaker collections from trading. Goldman Sachs’ revenues rose 16 percent in this year’s second quarter to $15.4 billion, compared to a year earlier, the bank reported on 13 July. The bank made 20 percent more...

A survey released on Friday showed that U.S. consumers have new fears about inflation, which could hamper some hopes of a swift recovery, a report said. The Financial Times, citing the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, reported that some customers are facing “sticker shock” when trying to buy everyday items like chicken and produce....

The U.S. Federal Reserve will not raise interest rates or curtail its $120-billion-a-month bond-buying program any time soon, Fed chair Jerome Powell told Congress on 14 June, despite inflation shooting to 5.4 percent year-on-year last month, its fastest clip in 13 years, as the U.S. labor department reported. High inflation is “transitory,” Powell said again...

Many U.S. retail banks are permanently closing branches and firing staff, betting that online banking that became a habit during the 2020 shutdown will endure, according to the Financial Times. Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Wells Fargo collectively have closed more than 250 branches this year, cutting their networks by as much as 5 percent. Wells Fargo,...

Blackstone, one of the world’s largest investment managers, has bought 678 rent-controlled apartment buildings around the U.S. from insurance giant AIG for $5.1 billion, the Financial Times reported. The apartments are covered by the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, which gives developers tax breaks if they limit rents to no more than 20...

Across the U.S., the monthly rent for an apartment has increased an average of 7.5 percent this year, three times the typical annual bump, as demand is surging, Apartments.com reported. Analysts expect rents to continue climbing into next year, due largely to three factors, according to the Washington Post:  young adults are re-establishing their own...

During 2021’s first quarter, U.S. economic output returned to 99.5 percent of its level at the end of 2019. At the same time, American workers put in 4.5 percent fewer hours, according to The Wall Street Journal. In other words, the shutdown forced companies to automate or streamline processes, operations, and product lines, allowing businesses...