Tag: sept 14 2021

On 9 September, major U.S. airlines lowered profit expectations for the rest of this year, due to reductions in bookings because of COVID’s rampant Delta variant, The Wall Street Journal reported. Airlines had made optimistic earnings and profit forecasts in summer as reservations for summer and fall travel grew, as we reported in “U.S. Airline...

Sales in the U.S. restaurant and food service industry will reach $789 billion this year, a 20-percent gain on 2020’s figure, but still well short of 2019’s $864 billion, the National Restaurant Association (NRA) has predicted. Eateries are still short of workers, face rising food costs and menu prices, and now the COVID virus’s Delta...

ABC Carpet and Home, a purveyor of luxury home décor to New York City’s upper crust for more than a century, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, blaming its woes on the COVID-era lockdown and a “mass exodus” of its customer base from Manhattan. An investment vehicle called 888 Capital Partners has offered $15.3...

In 2020, officials of the U.S. Federal Reserve traded stocks and other securities while the central bank was shoring up financial markets with bond purchases, rock-bottom interest rates, and other aids. The reported trades were made by Robert Kaplan, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Eric Rosengren, president of the Boston Fed....

On 28 August, a record 44 ships were anchored off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Bloomberg reported, waiting for a slot in a terminal to load goods bound for China or unload merchandise coming from there. Ships’ average wait time had grown to 7.6 days on that date, compared to 6.2 days...

Office spaces in 10 major U.S. cities saw occupancy rates of 33 percent in the week ended 25 August, dipping from 35 percent in late July, according to Kastle Systems, which tracks swipe card use in more than 2,500 business buildings. Offices in New York and San Francisco were the most lightly attended at 22...

The Producer Price Index, a measure of what manufacturers charge wholesale markets for their finished products, jumped 8.3 percent from August 2020 through last month, the U.S. Labor Department reported the largest annual gain since the agency began tracking the number in 2010. The index, a measure of inflation that has yet to reach consumers,...

Earlier this year, economists’ vision for September 2021 was bright: the vast majority of people would be vaccinated, schools would fully reopen across the country, and retail, travel, and face-to-face service businesses would bloom again… and the work-at-home millions would be commuting back to their offices.  Now, thanks to the media fear of COVID’s Delta...

Consumers’ purchases of items designed to last at least three years, such as cars and washing machines, edged down 0.1 percent in July compared to June, totaling $257.2 billion. Orders for durable goods has increased in 13 of the past 15 months, according to The Wall Street Journal, but is now being hurt by shortages...

U.S. employers added a paltry 235,000 non-farm jobs in August after adding one million in July and 962,000 in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported as it also revised upward the previous two months’ numbers. The consensus among economists had called for 735,000 new jobs last month, almost three times the actual number...