Tag: jul 28 2020

The Arkansas Teacher Retirement System has sued Allianz Global Investors, charging the financial management firm pursued a “reckless strategy” during the economic shutdown that cost the pension fund $800 million. The retirement fund says Allianz’s Alpha Funds made bets that investment markets would not lose money during the shutdowns in an attempt to cover losses...

Long before the COVID Pandemonium struck, there was a college debt crisis in the U.S. The 43 million Americans carrying student loan debt – averaging more than $32,000 per borrower – were allowed to skip payments during the economic shutdown, a measure implemented as part of Congress’s CARES Act bailout plan. The reprieve ends on...

With many schools not reopening until some time after Labor Day, Target, Walmart, and other companies relying on back-to-school shopping for a late summer sales bump are unlikely to see it this year, analysts and retailers said. About 37 percent of parents already have enough school supplies and another 32 percent think it’s too early...

Colleges, faced with vanishing revenues, have reached a point where many are considering the previously unimaginable: laying off faculty. Colleges are dealing with rising cleaning and sanitation costs due to the virus, having to stockpile protective equipment and other supplies. At the same time, they are losing revenue from the absence of foreign students, locked-down...

A bad situation will get terribly worse. IHS Markit forecasts the U.S. economy contracted at an annualized rate of 35.3 percent in the quarter just ended… its sharpest quarterly crash since 1947. As the economy goes down, so, too, will businesses. Roughly 60 percent of the 26,160 restaurants listed on Yelp’s review website that closed...

This comes as no surprise to Trends Journal subscribers. Small businesses are recovering more slowly from the economic shutdown than are other sectors of the economy, reported Womply, a data and technology company with about 500,000 small-business clients. Key reasons: A large proportion of small businesses rely on person-to-person contact, such as restaurants, barber shops,...

U.S. retailers are on track to permanently close 25,000 stores this year, led by high-profile bankruptcies of J.C. Penney and Pier One, among others, according to Coresight Research, a global analysis firm. The figure would set a record and more than doubles last year’s 9,832 closings. So far this year, major chains have closed or...

The U.S. budget deficit this fiscal year will top $3 trillion as the federal government pours cash into the economy to save businesses and individuals from financial collapse. In fact, it may even hit $4 trillion with more bailouts and money pumping schemes brewing in the near horizon in attempts to keep equities and the...