Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

Denmark-based Carlsberg, the world’s third-largest brewer, is expanding its offering of non-alcoholic beers, a market now growing by more than 20 percent annually in Europe. The company also plans to offer fermented beverages, a niche between beer and soft drinks. Carlsberg declined to elaborate on the nature of the fermented drinks it might produce. The...

With oil prices languishing around or below $40 a barrel, smaller oil companies are being subsumed by bigger ones. In September, Devon Energy announced its purchase of WPX Energy for $2.6 billion. This month, Chevron paid $5 billion in stock to acquire Noble Energy and ConocoPhillips is buying Concho Resources for $9.7 billion, the biggest...

Without immediate, direct government support, as many as half of all Canadian restaurants might well close permanently by the end of this year, Andrew Oliver, CEO of Oliver & Bonacini Restaurants, told Bloomberg News. Even with government help, 25 percent of the country’s dining establishments may disappear by January, he warned. Patio dining has been...

Procter & Gamble (P&G) and the maker of Lysol reported strong gains in sales in the third quarter. P&G, which makes Mr. Clean and Safeguard anti-bacterial soap, saw its biggest quarterly global sales increase in 15 years. Sales in its home care division, the home of Swiffer and other cleaning products, rose 30 percent. Microban...

Coca-Cola is ending about half the drink brands in its portfolio, including Dasani, Vitamin Water, and Odwallah. It will focus its resources on core products, such as Coca-Cola Zero Sugar and fast-growing niche brands including AHA caffeinated seltzer and Topo Chico hard seltzer, CEO James Quincey said recently to analysts. Sales of water brands and...

As consumers turned to shopping online and major anchor stores such as JCPenny and Macy’s closed, malls pinned their hopes on movie theaters to draw customers to the shops that remain. Ninety of the 240 A-rated U.S. malls have theaters, while 170 of the 700 B-rated centers have them, according to Green Street, a commercial...

PayPal and partner Paxos, a financial tech start-up, will be able to buy, hold, and deal in various forms of cryptocurrencies under a “BitLicense” granted to PayPal on 21 October by the New York State Department of Financial Services. The license will allow PayPal to deal in Bitcoin, Etherium, Bitcoin cash, and Litecoin. Until now,...

Without $2.8 billion in emergency aid by December to “stave off bankruptcy,” Amtrak will cut as many as 2,400 jobs and delay crucial infrastructure projects, including the Gateway tunnel between New York and New Jersey and bridge improvements in Connecticut, CEO William Flynn told Congress on 21 October. After the pandemic and economic shutdown began,...

The state of New York, its agencies, and cities face a $59-billion budget chasm through 2022 due to the costs of coping with the COVID pandemic and the effects of the economic shutdown, state and city agencies have calculated. The $59 billion figure is more than half of the state’s current operating budget. The state...

Attempting to make a terrible situation sound better, although passenger traffic is down 60 percent, last week, the Transportation Safety Administration reported more people are traveling this month than at any time since March. American and Southwest Airlines reports reservations are moving up for the Thanksgiving and December holiday seasons, leading Southwest to resume selling...