Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

Again, as we had forecast, it is now reality. About 56 percent fewer tenants are seeking office space in San Francisco, and 32 percent fewer in neighboring Silicon Valley, from February through May this year compared to last, said CBRE, a commercial real estate firm. The economic shutdown has forced companies to trim their budgets...

More than 52 percent of U.S. homeowners currently worry about their ability to continue making mortgage payments, and 47 percent have considered selling their homes because they might be unable to afford mortgage payments in the future, according to a survey of 2,000 households conducted by OnePoll and the National Association of Realtors. About 81...

Americans have missed or skipped payments on more than $100 million in loans since 1 March. About 106 million installment loans were enrolled in formal deferment, forbearance, or relief programs on 1 May, about triple the number on 1 April. Roughly 79 million student loan payments went unmade on 1 May, up from 18 million...

With the Wall Street line and political hype of the economy rebounding, barely mentioned, and mostly hidden, is the fact that U.S. banks’ profits in the aggregate fell 69.6 percent, down to $18.5 billion, from the quarter a year previous, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reported. Half of all banks reported falling profits and 7.3...

While equity markets are hitting new highs, a lot of the big money players, fearful of the risks, are going into cash. Assets in U.S. money market funds have reach $4.6 trillion, according to analysis firm Refinitiv Lipper, exceeding the $3.8-trillion level reached during the Great Recession. About $1 trillion has been added this year...

The return of U.S. jobs will be slow to permeate all sectors of the economy and likely to leave low-wage workers to suffer longest if the shutdown lingers, warned Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, in 16 June testimony to Congress. The shutdown cost jobs among African Americans, Hispanics, and women more...

Brent Crude continues to climb above the $40 a barrel mark as the OPEC+ team and U.S. companies cut back on production while consumption is increasing. U.S. oil production is likely to fall by 50 percent over the next 12 months, according to an 18 June analysis published by Oilprice.com. The number of oil and...

As Trend Journal subscribers well know, we were the first to call the “Gold Bull Run” a year ago when gold was trading at $1,332 per ounce. Today, gold hit its highest level since October 2012, up $17, closing at $1,770 as the dollar descended. After the U.S. government went some $3 trillion deeper in...

As we have made abundantly clear in the Trends Journal with copious facts and figures, the rise in the equity markets on Wall Street have no correlation to the dire economic conditions that have hit Main Street. We have been reporting since last year, when the Federal Reserve pumped some $7 trillion into the repo...

OECD WARNS OF SECOND LOCKDOWN’S DANGERS. Mirroring what we have long forecast, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned of a second worldwide economic shutdown if the COVID virus resurges would do severe damage to a global economy already reeling. The world’s GDP will contract by 6 percent this year if no new...