Wall Street Journal Chief Economic Correspondent Nick Timiraos discussed strategy surrounding the Fed’s speculated decision to combat inflation by potentially hiking interest rates by another 75 basis points ahead of their announcement Wednesday. U.S. existing home sales slowed for the seventh straight month in August as rising mortgage rates, surging inflation and steep home prices continued to push prospective buyers out of the market. Sales of previously owned hom …
Category: Green-Headline
Small-business sentiment saw an improvement in August, but continued to remain depressed, according to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index rose by 1.9 points last month, to 91.8, data from a Sept. 13 press release showed. Though the index reversed some of the declines seen during the first half of the year, it remained below the 48-year average of 98 for the eighth consecutive month. Among sur …
LONDON—Eurozone business activity contracted for a second month in August as demand sank, with customers wary of the deepening cost of living crisis and gloomy economic outlook curtailing their purchases, a survey showed.S&P Global’s final composite Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), seen as a guide to economic health, fell to an 18-month low of 48.9 in August from July’s 49.9, below a …
Britain’s manufacturers are warning that their energy costs have already spiraled out of control, with nearly half reporting that electricity bills have shot up by over 100 percent in the past 12 months.Make UK, the trade organisation that represents 20,000 manufacturers, is pressuring the government to take immediate action over the energy crisis, saying companies face cutting production or closing for good.
“The current crisis is leaving …
The University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment measures how U.S. consumers feel about their personal finances, business conditions and buying conditions. Recent surveys have shown that consumers have rarely felt more downbeat about all of these measures.In the past, when consumer sentiment was as depressed as it is today, stocks were in a bear market, unemployment was higher than average or prices were rising faster than usual.
Journal Reports: Personal InvestingIf You Withdrew Money From Your IRA During Covid, It Can Pay to Repay ItBy Leonard SloaneSeptember 3, 2022 at 3:00 PM ETAnd if you do so, you’ll get another tax break
CommentaryAugust jobs printed at 315,000 new jobs, somewhat above the consensus estimate of 300,000 jobs. It was more than 200,000 fewer jobs than were created in both July 2022 and August 2021. June and July revisions combined to create 107,000 fewer jobs than were previously reported. It is generally believed that 200,000–250,000 jobs are required to accommodate population growth.
The unemployment rate was 3.7 percent, up 0.2 percentage points from …
(Bloomberg) — Investors who might be looking for the world’s biggest bond market to rally back soon from its worst losses in decades appear doomed to disappointment.Most Read from BloombergThe US employment report on Friday illustrated the momentum of the economy in face of the Federal Reserve’s escalating effort to cool it down, wit …
Mortgage rates in the U.S. are nearly twice what they were a year ago this week, an ongoing sign of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive push to tamp down inflation by constricting the financial market to varying degrees.Freddie Mac said in a press release this week that 30-year fixed-rate mortgages “averaged 5.66 percent with an average 0.8 point as of September 1, 2022.”
That figure is “up from last week when it averaged 5.55 percent,” Freddie mac noted, while “a year ago …
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Posted: Sep 05, 2022 12:04 AM
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When the military action between Ukraine and Russia kicked off in February, experts began warning of food shortages. Sanctions and counter sanctions have wreaked havoc on global trade, particularly in grain. In the Middle East, there are food shortages because of this.Fortunately, Americans are not seeing any food shortages yet.The most important word is yet.The last two years, even before Ukraine, have shown the fragility of the international supply chain. For Americans, we don’t have to worry about food shortages yet. But depending on what Congress does next year, that could change. America depends on sugar as an essential part of foods from sweets to breads to sauces and sugar farmers support over 151,000 jobs in the United States. Sugar is one of the leading crops in the United States. Sugar farmers employ over one hundred and fifty thousand people. That’s just the direct employees. That does not count the number of people employed in companies that support the sugar farming industry.Sugar is one of the most important components in America’s food. The problem is other sugar producers around the world use “free trade” as an excuse to dump sugar and if they had their way, they would do it in the United States. Unfortunately, ther …
Jeremy Grantham: Stock market ‘tragedy’ when ‘superbubble’ bursts
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The Federal Reserve paid out nearly $11 billion to banks and money market funds in August just for keeping cash of the entities and their clients parked at the central bank, according to Fed data.The central bank is using this method to discourage lending at rates it considers too low. As it raises rates to counter inflation, though, it also pays the bankers more and more.
So far this year, the Fed ha …
New orders for products of U.S. manufacturers either expanded in August or contracted for the third straight month—depending on which survey you believe.
The Institute for Supply Management’s U.S. Purchasing Manufacturings Index (PMI), the more widely followed survey, showed new orders rising in August. The S&P Global PMI, however, showed new orders falling for the third straight month.
While differing on some details, both surveys paint a picture of a manufacturing sector …
The chain said Wednesday that it will lay off approximately 20% of corporate employees, close around 150 stores and slash several of its in-house home goods’ brands.Crucially, the company also said it secured more than $500 million in financing to shore up its ailing financial straits.Berna Barshay, an independent retail analyst, said the company’s moves were the “prototypical rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” and the business was in structural decline. Shoppers in recent years have switched to other chains such as Target (TGT), while the novelty of Bed Bath & Beyond’s beloved coupons has faded because consumers can easily find cheap prices on Amazon (AMZN) and other online sites. Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY), which has become a volatile “meme stock” in recent years, fell 20% in early trading Wednesday.The announcements, part of a “strategic update,” came just days after a key investor dumped almost his entire stake in the company and reports surfaced that some Bed Bath & Beyond suppliers halted shipments due to unpaid bills. Bed Bath & Beyond also said Wednesday that sales at stores open for at least one year plunged 26% during its latest quarter.In June, the company announced that CEO Mark Tritton, who joined from Target (TGT)in 2019 to try to turn things around, was being pushed out. Tritton spearheaded growing the chain’s own brands, a strategy that worked at Target, but failed to catch on at Bed Bath & Beyond.The company said Wednesday that it was reversing this strategy. That means national brands will be featured more prominently, rather than its own brands. Three of its brands will also face the chopping block, including Studio 3B, Haven and Wild Sage.But major brands may be reluctant to give Bed Bath & Beyond their best stuff, Barshay said.Bed Bath & Beyond is “financially up against the wall, so it’s going to be harder to stay in stock from key vendors,” she said. “If you’re Dyson and Keurig and you’re trying to maintain a halo over your brand, the last thing you want is discounting.” …
Why Gen Z’s latest trend is setting it up for failure
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Johns Hopkins University economics professor Steve Hanke predicted on Monday that America will experience a “whopper” of a recession in 2023 due to manipulation of the money supply by the Federal Reserve.During an interview with CNBC, Hanke noted that M2 — a measure of the money supply that incorporates cash, checking deposits, savings, and other relatively liquid assets — soared in 2020 as a result of the central bank’s actions before plateauing this year, as indicated by data from the Federal Reserve.“The bottom line is we’re going to have stagflation — we’re going to have the inflation because of this excess that’s now coming into the system,” Hanke explained, arguing that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Pow …
In America, inflation is completely out of control, the Democrats just raised taxes, the economy is nosediving into the pavement, and we’re already in a recession even if the Left denies it. Despite all that, what is the Biden administration doing? They’re giving away between $440 and $600 billion (estimates vary) of …
It’s baaaa-aaaaack … and it’s bad. ADP took the summer off to retool its monthly National Employment Report, thanks to a consistently non-predictive result when compared to the official jobs reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Its new report, now in partnership with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, predicts that job growth in August will miss expectations — by a lot:
Com …
Pubs will have no other option but to close owing to “out of control” energy bills, with upwards of 300 percent price hikes possible, UK brewery and pub bosses have warned.Leaders of six of the country’s largest breweries and pub businesses involved in the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) are pressuring the government to take immediate action o …