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After two years of near-nonstop growth, housing prices may have finally peaked in some U.S. cities, according to data from Florida Atlantic University. Still, experts predict that Florida’s real estate market will remain strong compared to other parts of the country.Each month, economists Ken H. Johnson from FAU and Eli Beracha from Florida International University compare the expected price of housing with the actual price in the country’s largest metro areas to see which cities are the most overvalued.Tampa ranked ninth overall in July, with the average home selling for 58.5% more than the expected price. Fort Myers came in at No. 3 and Lakeland at No. 7.Housing premiums — the difference between the actual and expected price — declined in 27 metro areas.“This is a sign that places are reaching the top of the cycle and prices are going to start normalizing again now,” said Johnson.Meanwhile, every city in Florida saw premiums increase slightly from June to July. In Tampa, premiums went up more than 1 percentage point.Despite this, Lei Wedge, a professor of finance at the University of South Florida Muma Co …

(Bloomberg) –Most Read from BloombergUK inflation could top 22% next year if natural gas prices remain elevated in the coming months, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. warned.The prediction is the latest startling forecast for the severity of the crisis that’s unfolding in the UK, with hopes fading that inflation will peak in October. Goldman’s outlook is even more gloomy than a prediction last week from Citigroup, which price gains peaking at 18.6%, well above the 13% figure the Bank of England forecast earlier this month.In a note on Monday, written after an upward spiral in gas prices, Goldman economists led by Sven Jari Stehn said that if prices stayed at those levels, the UK will be forced to increase its energy cap by a further 80% in January. That would push up inflation to 22.4% and and trigger a 3.4% decline in gross domestic product.Even if energy costs moderate, as predicted by the bank’s commodities analysts, th …

I saw this video on Twitter last week. It shows employees at one of China’s largest tech companies, Tencent, running out of their building after someone inside tested positive for COVID. The employees knew that unless they escape the building very quickly, they will be locked down inside for days.

How not to #antivi …






A shopper pushes his cart past a display of packaged meat in a grocery store in southeast Denver in May 2020. Meat prices have soared in 2022, leading some consumers to change their consumption habits. (David Zalubowski/AP)

It was the $200 weekly grocery bills that finally did him in. With three young kids and soaring meat costs, Logan Wagoner decided it was time to go whole hog. This spring, the St. Louis attorney bought half a cow and an entire pig — plus a freezer that now holds 320 pounds of bacon, sausages, rib-eye steaks, ground beef and soup bones in his basement. “My kids eat a lot of hot dogs, and the prices just got to be too much,” said Wagoner, 36. “Finally we said, ‘This is wild. What else can we do?’” He and his wife spent about $2,000 — including $700 on the freezer — and now have enough meat to last a year. Their weekly grocery bill has fallen to about $125.





This is what a freezer looks like shortly after it’s been stocked with the meat from half a cow and a whole pig. (Logan Wagoner) 

Inflation has been at or near 40-year highs since the spring, but families have been pinched by higher food prices for two years. Meat prices in particular have surged 17 percent since July 2020, spurring families around the country to change their purchasing patterns and eating habits. 

More than 70 percent of Americans have adjusted how they buy meat because of inflation, according to Glynn Tonsor, an agricultural economics professor at Kansas State University …






© Ann Saphir/Reuters
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell, right, and New York Federal Reserve President John Williams walk together before the 2019 Jackson Hole, Wyo., conference on monetary policy. Fed officials are gathering in Jackson Hole again this week. 

For months, the Federal Reserve has been under growing pressure to control inflation without jerking the economy into a recession. On Friday, Chair Jerome H. Powell will map out his plan for how the central bank could pull that off. 

Policymakers, financial markets and people around the United States — and the world — are eager for any hints about the Fed’s upcoming interest rate hikes and its broader outlook for the economy. Powell’s remarks, to be given Friday morning at the annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, will be key to the public’s understanding of how the Fed can rid the economy of its largest problem while preserving signs of strength, notably the still-churning job market. Jackson Hole: Where Fed officials gather, and workers can’t afford to stay Powell’s much-anticipated speech will also be crucial for his own credibility. In remarks for the conference last year, he doubled down on his belief that inflation would be temporar …

The global commodities market—from coffee to corn to crude—is heating up again. This could spell bad news for public policymakers and consumers in the inflation fight.Coffee has surged about 13 percent over the last week, rising to a near three-month high of $2.40 per pound on the U.S. ICE Futures Exchange. Year to date, the agricultural commodity is up 6 percent.
Investors are concerned that drought conditions in Brazil could reduce coffee yields and imp …

Canadian News Aug 25, 2022 5:30 PM
EST
There are currently 1,037,900 positions open compared to 1,005,700 in May.
StatCan says that job vacancies climbed to 3.2 percent in June, reaching a new high for employers seeking to fill in over a million positions across the country for the third month in a row.There are currently 1,037,900 positions open compared to 1,005,700 in May.Job vacancies were at 5.9 percent in June, matching a record-high that was reached in September 2021.StatCan says employers in the health care and social assistance sector were seeking to fill 149,700 vacant positions in June, “little changed from the record high reached in March (147,500), but 40.8 percent (+43,400) higher than in June 2021. The job vacancy rate was 6.3 percent in the sector in June 2022.“In the accommodation and food services sectors, vacancies increased 6.6 percent (+10,600 to 171,700) in June and were up 38.8 percent (+48,000) on a year-over-year basis. The job vacancy rate in the sector was 12.2 percent, more than double the all-sectors average.In retail trade, vacancies rose 15.3 percent (+15,200 to 114,400) in June, despite payroll employment in the sector returning to its February 2020 pre-pandemic level for the first time. Vacancies were 22.5 perc …

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Posted: Aug 26, 2022 12:01 AM

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Politicians of both parties sometimes take the voters for granted. Right now, Democrats have taken this idea to a new level. They are engaged in an organized campaign to lie to the American people.The topic of the campaign of lies is the marketing of the so called “Inflation Reduction Act.”  Democrats are campaigning on this bill and treating voters as if they are idiots. The bill does nothing to decrease inflation overall and will hammer average Americans and family businesses with a dramatic hike in energy inflation.It is possible that Democrats realized that the only way they could pass this bill that will result in even more inflation is to call market it as a bill to reduce inflation in the hope that when the new price hikes hit the American people, it will be too late for them to do anything about it.The bill is loaded with inflation enhancements. The $433 billion in new government spending offset by zero dollars in cuts to existing spending will increase inflation. The tax increases that will be passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices, with many specifically targeted in a way to hike gas prices, will increase inflation. Famed economist Milton Friedman argued that “only government creates inflation” with “too much government spending and government cre …

The good news from today’s interim estimate of second-quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis is … well, there isn’t any good news. The less-bad news? The Q2 contraction reported in the advance estimate a month ago came down from an annualized rate of ‑0.9% to ‑0.6%. And the only reason it contracted less than the advance estimate showed was because the weird trade imbalance that shielded the more-likely ‑2.3% contraction was we …

Texas banned BlackRock and nine other finance firms from working with the Lone Star state after declaring they were hostile to fossil fuels.
Glenn Hegar, the state comptroller, on Wednesday published a list of the financial companies that will be prohibited from entering into most contracts with state and local governments.

“The environme …

News AnalysisChinese A‑share companies have started listing in Switzerland, while the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) saw a record low funding in IPOs.
Hong Kong’s Weak IPO Market
According to its latest interim results (pdf), in the first half of 2022, the HKEX saw a 27 percent drop in profit and an 18 percent decline in revenue and other incomes compared to the same period last year. Its IPO fundraising plummeted from HK$211.7 billion (around $27.5 billion) to HK$19.7 billion (around $2.6 billion), dropping 91 percent year over year.
With its record …

Home sales throughout the United States plunged well over 12 percent in July relative to June, with the year-over-year number plummeting by nearly 30 percent, the federal government said on Tuesday. The Department of Housing and Urban Development said in a press release that data from HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau indicated “sales of new single-family houses in July 2022 were at a seasonally adjusted a …

Sales of new homes have tumbled to the lowest level since January 2016 amid declines across the entire housing sector.
New home sales in July plummeted from the month before, dropping a whopping 12.6% last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 511,000, according to a Tuesday report from the Census Bureau. The reading speaks to just how forcefully the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hiking is affecting the economy.
STRING OF BAD REPORTS SHOWS HOUSING SECTOR GETTING ROCKED INTO ‘RECESSION’
Many economists fear that new home sales, which have …

GlobeNewswireNotice of Extraordinary General Meeting of Jyske Bank A/SThis is to give notice of an Extraordinary General Meeting of Jyske Bank A/S, which will be held on Wednesday 14 September 2022, at 10.00 a.m. at Vestergade 8–16, 8600 Silkeborg, Denmark. At the Extraordinary General Meeting held on 22 August 2022, the motion to amend the Articles of Association was adopted. However, the members in general meeting with a right to vote represented less than 90% of the share capital, wherefore the final adoption of the amendment to the Articles of Association is s

50% of employers expect job cuts…

(Second column, 7th story, link)

Related stories:Wall St Bears Take Revenge After $7 Trillion Rally…Home prices plunging in ‘pandemic boomtowns’…

Home prices plunging in ‘pandemic boomtowns’ as market slumps

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ReutersOil climbs as tight supply moves back into focusLONDON (Reuters) ‑Oil rose $1 a barrel on Tuesday as tight supply moved back into focus as a result of Saudi Arabia floating the idea of OPEC+ output cuts to support prices and the prospect of a drop in U.S. crude inventories. The Saudi energy minister said OPEC+ had the means to deal with challenges including cutting production, state news agency SPA said on Monday, citing comments Abdulaziz bin Salman made to Bloomberg in an interview. “Whether cutting OPEC or OPEC+ output after September is justified is debatable,” said Tamas Varga of oil broker PVM.