Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

On the “Happy Days Are Here Again,” news that U.S. air travel is down 70 percent from a year ago; 60 percent of America’s restaurants that shut down during the lockdown won’t reopen; hotels total revenue per available room (TRevPAR) is down 88.9 percent, and cinema, theme parks, trade shows fairs, concerts, and conventions are...

Each week we highlight how the COVID War waged by politicians has destroyed market sectors and devastated business. Here are some of the latest companies that have taken an economic hit. CISCO SYSTEMS MAKES CUTS. The network equipment company will cut more than $1 billion in costs over the next several quarters and offer early...

Dior, Gucci, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and other marquee luxury brands have outperformed their smaller counterparts as the world’s economic shutdown began to ease. LVMH, which owns Dior, Luis Vuitton, Moët champagne, and Hennessy cognac reported a loss of 27 percent in revenue during the worst of the shutdown; Kering SA, which owns Gucci, lost 30...

In one of the U.S.’s marquee retail centers, the trendy Kate Spade fashion stores are boarded up for good. Victoria’s Secret and Gap have reopened stores in other states but not here. Subway and Le Pain Quotidien have walked away from dozens of sites. Chipotle and Shake Shack report stores in the northeastern U.S., including...

As we had forecast in March, there would be a great exodus of people leaving densely populated, expensive cites to “escape the virus” and rising crime rates. Around the world and across the nations, that trend has become reality. At one point last month, 13,117 apartments were listed for rent in Manhattan, more than double...

The Tribune Publishing Co. is taking a page from other corporations and assigning journalists from five newspapers to work from home, allowing the company to give up leased office space. The five newspapers are the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, MD; the Carroll County Times, MD; the Morning Call in Allentown, PA; the New York Daily...

The U.S.’s inability to control the spread of the COVID virus is hampering the economic recovery, said Eric Rosengren, chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, on 12 August. “Common-sense precautions, such as wearing masks… are much less costly than having to shut down whole sectors of the economy,” he said. “We must get...

Again, connoting the income disparity between the rich and middle class, big and small, companies listed on the Russell 2000 of small-cap publicly-traded companies collectively lost $1.1 billion in 2020’s second quarter, compared to $18 billion in profits a year earlier, reported FactSet, a data company. Goodyear Tire & Rubber lost $696 million in the...

As the rich have gotten richer, America, once the “Land of Opportunity” is seeing its middle class shrinking smaller. Long before the COVID Panic pumped trillions more wealth into the bank accounts of the wealthiest, income growth for Americans in their prime working years has narrowed from 27 percent to 8 percent from 2002 to...

In part as a result in response to July’s increase in consumer spending, the shortage of products, and supply chain disruptions, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.6 percent in July, equaling its rise in June and upsetting analysts’ forecast of a 0.3-percent hike. The rise was greater than June’s 0.2 percent and put consumer...