Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

In the week ending 20 March, 684,000 people filed new claims for unemployment benefits, the U.S. Labor Department reported, the first time new claims have fallen below 700,000 since mid-March 2020. New claims fell by 97,000 from the previous week’s total of 781,000. New claims in Illinois plunged 80 percent from the week before; Ohio’s...

On the equity market front, it’s another day of money junkie addicts hooked on making all the money they can and the Bankster Mob injecting them with monetary methadone to keep them on their ripping-off-the-system high. Over the last few weeks, the stock market news was about Greensill Capital, run by Lex Greensill, the Australian...

Extended Stay America, a mid-price hotel chain providing long-term guests with kitchens and more space than usual hotel rooms, is being bought for $6 billion by a partnership of Blackstone Group and Starwood Capital Group, two of the country’s largest investment management firms. During the pandemic, the chain catered to essential workers and health care...

Google will spend $7 billion to expand its office space and data centers this year, including a $1-billion investment in space in California, the company has announced. The new offices will house some of the 10,000 new employees the company will hire as the economy recovers, it said. Google’s workforce numbered more than 135,000 worldwide...

As the economy slowly recovers, Manhattan will permanently see fewer office workers coming into the city, a survey completed early this month by the nonprofit Partnership for New York has found. Among the survey’s findings: 66 percent of employers will maintain a hybrid workforce, mixing days in the office with days working at home; Only...

Any digital currency a central bank creates “needs to coexist with cash and other types of money in a flexible and innovative payment system,” Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, said in an 18 March press conference. The Fed is experimenting in-house with digital currencies, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is...

The copper that makes up electrical wiring and plumbing pipe costs a third more now than it did in October. The price of oil, which goes into everything from vinyl flooring to roof shingles, is up more than 80 percent this year. Lumber is twice as expensive as it normally is at this time of...

From airlines and restaurants to casinos and tourist attractions, 2020’s economic shutdown sucked $1.1 trillion in travel-related spending out of the U.S. economy, a 42-percent year-on-year loss, according to a report commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association (USTA). That loss of spending idled 5.6 million workers, about a third of the country’s travel-related workforce, the...

Last Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve declared it will not raise interest rates or stop buying $120 billion a month of government bonds and mortgage-backed securities any time soon, although the central bank sees a stronger economy emerging. “We will continue to provide the economy the support that it needs for as long as it...

President Biden is mulling a proposal to raise taxes, Bloomberg has reported. Among the steps being considered: For those earning $400,000 or more annually, the personal tax rate would rise to 39.6 percent; For those earning $1 million or more annually, capital gains would be taxed as regular income; The estate tax would rise to...