Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

BuzzFeed, the news website, was poised to make its first profit, about $30 million, this year, after 14 years online. Group Nine, owner of The Dodo and Thrillist sites, was due for black ink after four years in the red. Then the global lockdown struck. Conventional newspapers and magazines with paid subscribers were already in...

Political and public health uncertainties, the U.S. Federal Reserves’ interest rate cuts, and recovering economies abroad while America’s remains hobbled are likely to continue to weaken the dollar, analysts say, making American goods cheaper overseas. The dollar’s value slipped 0.4 percent in June and another 0.7 percent this month against a collection of six other...

During the week of 7 July, investors pulled $491 million out of ProShares UltraPro OOO, an exchange-traded fund that invests in surging tech stocks. The weekly outflow was the largest since the fund’s founding in 2010. Despite the outflow, the fund ended the week with a record $7.1 billion in assets, due in part to...

Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo have expanded to $28 billion their pool of cash to cover loans that may begin to go bad as $600 weekly federal unemployment benefits run out at the end of this month. The banks said the projected value of loans expected to fail is greater now than was expected...

The U.S. Federal Reserve set up the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) last March to enable low-interest “student loans, auto loans, credit card loans… and certain other assets.” TALF sells bundles of loans to investors at low interest rates, which are passed on to the businesses and individuals who took out the loans. So...

Many small businesses were beginning to reopen as shutdown orders began to lift last month. Now, as the pandemic gains new strength and lockdowns are being reimposed, a number of those businesses which had restocked merchandise and invested in protective equipment for workers and customers are shutting down for good. “I can’t keep doing this,”...

The media’s constant refrain of rising COVID virus cases, even as the death rate declines, has thwarted investors and government officials’ expectations that the U.S. economy would bounce back strongly in 2020’s second half. With “must wear mask” rules being enforced in scores of states, the hopes of businesses… retail, hospitality, restaurants – throwing open...

This year already has seen investment-grade debt lose $800 billion in value and corporations default on loans worth $55 billion – a faster slide than during the Great Recession and “a wave of insolvencies is possible,” said Lail Brainard, one of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s five governors, in a speech last week. She advocated making...

GOODBYE, SMALL BUSINESSES. More than 110,000 U.S. small businesses closed for good during the first weeks of the U.S. economic shutdown, according to an April study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The survey, made as the shutdown’s full force was beginning to be felt, also found that: 43 percent of businesses were at...

As we note in this and other Trends Journals, equity markets keep spiking with each new report of a new COVID vaccine. The Dow rose four consecutive days last week, in part floating on the hope that a COVID virus vaccine from pharma giant Moderna is near. They will begin human trials later this month....