President Joe Biden plans to sign an executive order Wednesday seeking to strengthen America’s supply chains in several sectors to bolster the economy and protect workers, administration officials said. The executive order would strengthen supply chains for critical goods primarily in mainly four areas: pharmaceuticals, rare earth minerals, semiconductor chips and large-capacity batteries. Officials said […]

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan chipmakers are buying water by the truckload for some of their foundries as the island widens restrictions on water supply amid a drought that could exacerbate a chip supply crunch for the global auto industry. Some auto makers have already been forced to trim production, and Taiwan had received requests for […]

Inflation and employment remain well below the Federal Reserve’s goals, meaning easy monetary policy is likely to stay in place, central bank Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday. Despite a sharp rise this year in bond yields that has accompanied heightened concern over inflation, Powell said price pressures remain mostly muted and the economic outlook is still “highly uncertain.”

An important long-run change in U.S. labor markets is the decline of middle-skill occupations, like manufacturing and production jobs, and the growth in both high- and low-skill occupations, like managerial jobs on one end and jobs that assist or care for others on the other. Economists have coined the term “job polarization” for this process.1 […]

(Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve warned of significant risks of business bankruptcies and steep drops in commercial real estate prices in a report published on Friday. “Business leverage now stands near historical highs,” the central bank said in its semi-annual Monetary Policy Report to Congress. “Insolvency risks at small and medium-sized firms, as well as at some […]

Thursday, February 18, 2021 06:00 AM By Lucy Meakin (Bloomberg) – – Over 100 million workers in eight of the world’s largest economies may need to switch occupation by 2030 as the Covid-19 pandemic accelerates changes to the labor force, according to research by McKinsey & Co. One-in-16 workers in China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Spain, […]

Buyer demand for newly built homes continues to surge, and that is keeping builder confidence high even as building material prices climb. Builder sentiment rose one point to 84 in February according to the latest National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) released Wednesday. Anything above 50 is considered positive sentiment. The […]

Consumers flocked to spend their stimulus checks in January, sending retail sales for the month up 5.3% in a blockbuster start to 2021, according to a government report Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones were expecting a rise of just 1.2%. Excluding autos, sales rose 5.9%, also far ahead of the 1% estimate in a […]

The Federal Reserve has long been thought of as first and foremost an inflation fighter, using its power over interest rates to maintain price stability in the U.S. economy. At least for the foreseeable future, that role is taking a backseat to a larger effort at getting America back to work. Under the central bank’s new […]

By Matthew Fox February 04, 2021 A near 40% decline in volatility this week suggests the stock market has more room to the upside, according to Fundstrat. The volatility decline was likely sparked by extreme de-leveraging due to the GameStop short-squeeze. The stock market has historically been higher 87% of the time in the months […]