Tag: may 31 2022

During the 12 months ending 31 July, 2021, the largest U.S. cities lost residents at a faster pace than small and medium-size cities, census bureau data shows. In the nine cities with populations of at least one million people, the number of residents dropped by 1.9 percent. Phoenix and San Antonio were the only two...

After lifting the federal funds rate by a half-point early this month, members of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee foresee doing the same in June and again in July, minutes of their May meeting show. The record shows that members discussed deliberately raising rates high enough to slow economic growth in order to...

U.S. inflation and economic growth will slow this year and into next, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has predicted. “Elevated inflation persists in 2022 because of the combination of strong demand and restrained supply,” CBO director Phillip Swagel said in a statement.  The supply chain mess will begin sorting itself out in the second...

The U.S. economy contracted 1.5 percent in this year’s first quarter, according to the most recent estimate by the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Earlier, the bureau had pegged the loss at 1.4 percent. Dow Jones had estimated a 1.3-percent shrinkage. It was the U.S. economy’s worst quarterly performance since 2020’s second quarter when...

Natural gas prices in the U.S. have tripled in the last year, rising 20 percent this month alone to pierce through $9 per million British thermal units (BTUs), The Wall Street Journal reported. The price is the highest since 2008. Natural gas is prime fuel for electricity generating plants. As a result, the price of...

Consumer spending rose 0.9 percent in April from March, its fourth consecutive month of increases as the U.S. savings rate crashed to 4.4 percent of income, its lowest since 2008 amid the Great Recession, the U.S. commerce department reported. Vehicles and services led the spending spree, which seems to have been funded by people short-changing,...

The U.S. Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, dipped to 6.3 percent in April, year on year, after registering 6.6 percent in March, the biggest annual gain since January 1982. April was the first month since late 2020 when inflation’s rate eased instead of accelerated. Prices moved up 0.2...

As we say, we are trend forecasters. No one can predict the future because there are too many wild cards, be they manmade or made by Nature.  On the manmade side, the Ukraine War and the sanctions imposed on Russia, as we have noted in great detail in the Trends Journal, have dramatically driven up...